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| Eaton's/Sears |
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 4th.
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.
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.