April in April
Saturday, April 04, 2026
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| Deborah - Wreck Beach - taken with a swivel lens panoramic Widelux |
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| April - Wreck Beach circa 1977 - my first nude |
Because my
mother, grandmother, wife Rosemary and I were teachers I have a feeling that I
am obliged to impart the knowledge in my head before I meet up with my statistically
soon oblivion.
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| Katheryn at the Marble Arch Hotel |
I may have
the largest files on women not wearing much anywhere. I would like to explain
why this is so.
Until I was
around 14 I was a painter and drawer. My mother even had me take lessons in
Mexico City with an artist called Robin Bond. One day I told my mother that I
could no longer draw or paint. She became very angry and almost gave me a
whipping. It was not until 1958 that I bought my first camera and decided to
take photographs.
In 1969,
having been married to my Rosemary for a year I took some nude photographs of
her. I have no idea why that happened. What is important for me is that they
were portraits. My idea of eroticism was far away from my mind or I simply did
not acknowledge it.
In 1975 my
wife, two daughters and I moved to Vancouver. By 1977 I was taking nude
photographs on Wreck Beach. Here is my first ever nude in Vancouver of April.
There is nothing erotic about it. It does show what soon became of my
photographic particulars. This was to have something odd in my photographs. The
black sand on April’s feet is such an example.
Now today
April 4, 2026 I have finally understood my obsession in taking photographs of
undraped women. It is most obvious that looking back at the many Renaissance of
women and men in the nude had a purpose beyond the obvious of wanting to do it.
The nude without clothes, when done well, prepared one to paint them with
clothes on. It showed how the body moved and how to paint it gracefully.
Now in this
century, here in Vancouver nude figure studies places are happening. Why? It is
for the same above reason. I cannot go to these because I cannot draw. But I have done my own version of nude figure studying.
I can state
here that my portraits of people are good simply because I have knowledge of
how their bodies are and I know how to pose them.
April is the Cruelist Month - T.S. Eliot
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
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| Brother Dunstan Bowles, C.S.C. |
Tonight with
my insomnia it is almost April 2 but I will begin this blog in the last quarter
hour of the first.
I want to
write here how the Brothers of Holy Cross (the same as in Indiana’s Notre Dame
University) seem to keep me feeding myself from that almost full jar that is my
life. Brother Dunstan Bowles, C.S.C. taught me English Literature in 1960. How
can it be that 76 years later I remembered T.S. Eliott’s Wasteland’s
connection with April?
Knowledge
from my past and reading tough non-fiction now is giving me a reason to not
give up and simply wait to die at my age of 83. I am not sure if Brother Dunstan told us about
the frequent presence of Latin in Wasteland.
Latin was never my forte in my Roman Catholic high school. I decided to
switch to Spanish as for this would be a breeze since I was born in Argentina
and my Spanish was and is very good. How would I know that taking Spanish with
Brother Anton Mattingly,C.S.C. was not going to be exactly a breeze and that to
this day my Spanish grammar is extremely good thanks to him?
I can only feel lucky that I had these Brothers as teachers for four years and that one of them, Brother Edwin Reggio got to know my wife Rosemary and our two granddaughters Rebecca & Lauren. And because of my curious habit of associating stuff with stuff that may have no evident connection I believe I will be taking out Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar for a re-read.
THE WASTE
LAND – T.S. Eliot -1922
“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis
meis vidi
in ampulla
pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβνλλα τί ϴέλεις; respondebat illa: άπο ϴανεΐν ϴέλω.”
For Ezra
Pound
il miglior
fabbro.
I. The
Burial of the Dead
April is the
cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out
of the dead land, mixing
Memory and
desire, stirring
Dull roots
with spring rain.
Winter kept
us warm, covering5
Earth in
forgetful snow, feeding
A little
life with dried tubers.
Summer
surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a
shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on
in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,10
And drank
coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar
keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we
were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's,
he took me out on a sled,
And I was
frightened. He said, Marie,15
Marie, hold
on tight. And down we went.
In the
mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much
of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the
roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this
stony rubbish? Son of man,20
You cannot
say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of
broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead
tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,23
And the dry
stone no sound of water. Only
There is
shadow under this red rock,25
(Come in
under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will
show you something different from either
Your shadow
at morning striding behind you
Or your
shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show
you fear in a handful of dust.30
Frisch weht
der Wind
31
Der Heimat
zu,
Mein Irisch
Kind
Wo weilest
du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago,35
“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms
full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and
my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor
dead, and I knew nothing,40
Looking into
the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und
leer das Meer.
42
Madame
Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad
cold, nevertheless
Is known to
be the wisest woman in Europe,45
With a
wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,46
Is your
card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are
pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is
Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of
situations.50
Here is the
man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is
the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is
blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am
forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged
Man. Fear death by water.55
I see crowds
of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you.
If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I
bring the horoscope myself:
One must be
so careful these days.
Unreal City,
60
Under the
brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd
flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not
thought death had undone so many.63
Sighs, short
and infrequent, were exhaled,64
And each man
fixed his eyes before his feet.65
Flowed up
the hill and down King William Street,
To where
Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead
sound on the final stroke of nine.68
There I saw
one I knew, and stopped him, crying, “Stetson!
“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!70
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,74
“Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!75
“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
76
