Autumnus on 7th Avenue - Kitsilano
Thursday, September 24, 2026
 | | 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.
Taking My Life & Resumé
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Jane Rule - Of Second Paragraphs On Wednesday,
I took my daughter Hilary to Burnaby, after making dinner for her in Kitsilano.
On my way back I listened to a splendid Ideas on CBC Radio that was dedicated
to Dorothy Parker. I was not aware that she had coined the expression – what fresh
hell is this?. I then looked up her poem Resumé
which is a funny take on suicide:
Resumé
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
That had me
thinking of the pile of four books in my downstairs guest bathroom. I am sure
that few if any of my guests would sit on the toilet and begin to read them. I
have them there to remind myself of the importance in reading and in particular
these. One of my faves which connects to Parker’s Resumé is Jane Rule’s Taking
My Life.
Quite a few
years ago, Books in Canada called me
and the editor asked me, “Alex how would
you like to photograph a 6 foot lesbian? I did and she charmed me.
It is that first
paragraph that remains in my memory:
Writing an autobiography may be a
positive way of taking my own life. Beginning in the dead of winter, mortal
with abused lungs and liver, my arthritic bones as incentive for old age, I may
be able to learn to value my life as something other than the hard and
threateningly pointless journey it has often seemed. I have never been suicidal
but often stalled, as I have been now for some months, not just directionless
but unconvinced that there is one. No plan for a story or novel can rouse my
imagination, which resolutely sleeps, feeding on the fat of summer. And so I
take my life, with moral and aesthetic misgivings, simply because there is
nothing else to do.
The Company of a Dead Cat
Monday, September 21, 2026
My
grandmother whom I called Abuelita constantly taught me refrains from the Don
Quijote de La Mancha and many more that she learned as a Little girl when going
to school in Valencia in the 19th
century.
Sometimes
she taught me stuff that was unkind. Of boring people she would say, “la
compañía del niño muerto,”
which translates to, “the company of the
dead child.”
Eight years
ago we adopted brother and sister cats that were called Mac and Cheese at the
SPCA. They were about 6 years old. Rosemary and I liked to adopt cats that were
middle-aged so that we could enjoy that mutual getting to know each other. I
did not like the SPCA names so I named them Niño and Niña.
Niña became
my cat and Niña adopted my Rosemary. They were our constant presence when we
were in bed and they slept with us.
After
Rosemary died on 9 December 2020 I found solace in the company of my cats. I
would talk to them (mostly I Spanish) and I catered to their needs. This
catering brought me a stability that I lacked in not having a partner, not
needing to work and having too much time to think. One routine was taking Niño
for his daily walk (no leash) around the block. Rosemary had taught him.
Rosemary often told me, “When I am not around and you walk Niño be patient and
don’t shout at him.”
On May 12
this year I woke up with Niño dead on my bed. It has been a devastating death
ever so slightly ameliorated by the Niña’s constant warm presence. Somehow, and
I am sure, she understands the concept of death. She has adopted all of Niño’s
quirks (except walking around the block). I often ask her, “Do you remember
Niño, Niño?”
She is my
daily routine as is my daily bike ride. The bike ride divides the day and that
activity adds a element of stability. I am not sure how I will handle the cold
in December. I would never bike in the
rain.
I will have
to cuddle with Niña on the bed and we
wil think of our Rosemary and Niño.
And so I can
modify what my abuelita told me to , “Niña
the company for a dead Niño.”
Balloons on the Bed
Sunday, September 20, 2026
 | | Evely Lau - 1989 |  | | 19 September 2026 |
In 1989 I
was called by a publicist called Nancy Flight asking me I would photograph a
brand new 18-year-old poet called Evelyn Lau. The book was called Runaway:
Diary of a Street Kid. I accepted. Flight asked me how I would photograph her.
I told her I was going to do it on her bed. Flight was shocked. I told her, “She
is still a teenager and she probably has a funny bedspread”. She did, it
featured red balloons.
Today I
went to room C225 at the Vancouver campus of University of British Columbia for
the launching and the reading from her new book Parade of Storms. The book
features poems related to what all people talk about these days- the weather.
Halfway
through the talk Lau asked us to try to write a poem. A few of us did.
I decided
to take the advice of:
Baltasar
Gracián (1601–1658) was a Spanish Jesuit priest, Baroque philosopher, and
writer known as a master of conceptismo, a literary style characterized by
witty, terse, and subtle expressions.
Here is my
poem:
Evelyn
Eevelyn
Runaway returned
Balloons on the bed
A beginning
Deserved
The Rose is Out of Town
Saturday, September 19, 2026
 | Bottom left - Hosta 'Sun Power' right Hosta 'Whirlwind" and narrow on top Hosta 'Praying Hands' 19 September 2026 | Every fall
when I want to mate one of my autumn scans I usually end up with Emily
Dickinson’s poem.
Autumn - Emily
Dickinson
The morns
are meeker than they were,
The nuts are
getting brown;
The berry's
cheek is plumper,
The rose is
out of town.
The maple
wears a gayer scarf,
The field a
scarlet gown.
Lest I
should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a
trinket on.
As fall
makes summer succumb, I invariably think of my Rosemary on her knees cutting
back the spent flowers from the garden. That I have to do it on my own, adds to
my fall melancholy. There is that next year and that spring with the promise of
my roses coming into bloom. Suffice now to scan these fall hosta flowers which
to my eyes are lovely and cannot be ignored.
Today
Saturday after listening to Evelyn Lau (will write a blog after this one) and
riding my bicycle it would seem that there is order to world. I will make
myself a large mug of strong tea and feed Niña her treats at 8pm. I will then
open The Heart Does Break – Canadian Writers on Grief and Mourning compiled by
George Bowering and Jean Baird. Not all
that cheery.
An Asymmetrical StripTease
Friday, September 18, 2026
 | | Below - Hosta 'Antioch' & Hosta 'Strip Tease' 18 September 2026 | Sometimes I
think that nature is not all that sophisticated. When tourists go to Mexico
many photograph the neat piles of fruits or vegetables in markets and often
mention how symmetrical they are.
I tend to
believe that in humans asymmetry is an indication of sophistication. Why must
the headlights in cars have to be exactly one both sides?
Thanks to my
Rosemary’s interest in gardening she approved of my sudden love for hostas
around 1987. I became a member of the American Hosta Society soon after. In
conventions judges eliminated hostas with asymmetrical leaves in any
competition. Somewhat that all changed in 1991 when Hosta ‘Strip Tease’ was
introduced. This hosta featured two tiny white lines around the middle that
were never the same. To me this was the first asymmetrical hosta.
Today as I
was walking around the garden I noticed my very large Hosta ‘Antioch’(also
named Moerheim). It is an old faithful hosta that I have had since the late
1980s and is the one in the pot outside my garden gate door.
I could not
resist scanning one very unsymmetrical one with one of Strip Tease.
Some years
ago I wrote an essay for asymmetry in a very good photographic web page called
Zone Zero. Here it is. Zone Zero On the other hand these leaves today of Rosa 'Emily Carr' display fine asymmetry.
An all's that to do again
Thursday, September 17, 2026
 | | Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 17 September 2026 | XI A Shropshire Lad – A. E.Houseman
Yonder see the morning blink:
The sun is up, and up must I,
To wash and dress and eat and drink
And look at things and talk and think
And work, and God knows why.
Oh often have I washed and dressed
And what's to show for all my pain?
Let me lie abed and rest:
Ten thousand times I've done my best
And all's to do again.
I did not
start to read and appreciate poetry until some years ago I first heard
Vancouver poet Gerry Gilbert. Before that I disliked poetry as in school we
were given extra grade points if we memorized one. I must have had a learning
disability that went beyond my dyslexia.
Now I have
fun finding poems to match my photographs or scans. I have written here before
how my friend,Vancouver poet Jamie Reid
(he often boasted he was a member of the Canadian Communist Party), inspired me
to read Houseman’s Shropshire Lad. I am constantly reminded of him as one of my
best roses is the English Rose Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’. When my other roses
have given up the ghost this one keeps blooming. Is what you see here yet
another “boring” scan of the rose?
Houseman’s
poem above pretty well describes my life as an 84-year-old man who misses his
Rosemary and finds some comfort in my female cat Niña. I don’t have to do
anything on any given day except feed her and feed myself. My existential angst
on knowing I am waiting to die is best explained in that line – And all’s that to do again.
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