extrañar

Del lat. extraneāre 'tratar como a un extraño'.

1. tr. Sentir la novedad de algo que usamos, echando de menos lo que nos es habitual. No he dormido bien porque extrañaba la cama.

2. tr. Echar de menos a alguien o algo, sentir su falta. Lloraba el niño extrañando a sus padres.

3. tr. Desterrar a país extranjero. U. t. c. prnl.

4. tr. Ver u oír con admiración o extrañeza algo. U. m. c. prnl.

5. tr. Afear, reprender.

6. tr. p. us. Apartar, privar a alguien del trato y comunicación que se tenía con él. U. t. c. prnl.

7. tr. desus. Rehuir, esquivar.

8. prnl. Rehusarse, negarse a hacer una cosa.

Diccionario de la Real Academia Española

Above is the Spanish definition of extrañar or to miss. The origin of the word is from Latin and it means to treat as a stranger. Somehow extrañar is more powerful in its pathos than the English equivalent to miss.

It is patently evident that one misses that which is gone. It can be a temporary one as when my Rosemary flies to Prince Edward Island with our two daugthers in a few weeks. I will miss her.

Vancouver is, I believe, a city where its inhabitants take stuff for granted until what they take for granted is gone. Vancouverites will tell you of the two previous incarnations of the Hotel Vancouver, of Eatons before it moved to what became Sears and now is Nordstrom.

I often feel like a bird in migration not being quite sure if the landmark I pass by is one that replaced a previous one. I can drive on Richards and Davie and see in my mind the former building that housed Vancouver Magazine and Western Living.

Vancouver is well known for keeping parts of inimitable places. So the sign that advertised the Smilin Buddha is kept somewhere. This somehow is supposed to calm our unsettling reaction to inevitable change.

And so there are all those city dwellers decrying the burning down yesterdayof the Topanga Café on 4^th.

I went there once with my friend Marv Newland. Since I lived in Mexico for many years I found the California version of Mexican dishes there not memorable and I never returned.

It is interesting to note that topanga is a Native-American term for where the mountain meets the sea. The name of the restaurant, then was most appropriate.

Seeing the hole left by the fire reminds me of being invited for a barbecue lunch by broadcaster Jack Webster in his home on Salt Spring Island. He started his charcoal fire with cedar shingles commonly used in BC for roofing.

What is curious about the fire is that yesterday I went to Macleod’s Books and purchased T.S. Eliot – The Complete Poems and Plays – 1909 – 1950. I bought it because it contains my favourite Four Quartets. One of them, East Coker, the second one, begins thusly:

In my beginning is my end. In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place

Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth

Which is already flesh, fur, and faeces,

Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

Houses live and die: there is a time for building

And a time for living and for generation

And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane

And to shake the wainscot where the field mouse trots

And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

The picture of Jo-Ann on the roof of my former studio on Robson and Granville came about my missing the hot sun of Mexico and of Edward Weston's photograph of Tina Modotti on the roof of his house in Mexico City.