La memoria es individual.

Nosotros estamos hechos,

En buena parte, de nuestra memoria.

Esta memoria está hecha,

En buena parte, de olvido.

J. L. Borges (1979), El tiempo

Memory is individual.

We are made,

In great part, of our memory.

This memory is made,

In great part, of oblivion.

Today Thursday I am watching Rachel Maddow to distract myself from the fact that my Rosemary is in Lillooet and being without her is like walking with only one shoe. I am unbalanced, unsteady, and desperately in need of her. To make it all worse I am looking at Niño lying on the coach with his ugly plastic cone around his neck which he will wear for 12 more days. He has four wounds of which three needed stitches. Had Rosemary been around now I would have shared a bit of that sorry face looking at me and saying, “Why am I being tortured with this?” I am sure that somewhere in his feline mind he believes she could instantly remove it if she were here.

As I watched Rachel I can always glance, and do, at the large framed photograph over my Sony linear tracking turntable. It is Linda Lorenzo holding my father’s 80-year-old mate from which he drank his mate (both the device and the herb are called by the same name) and now his son, too when he is especially melancholy. I will have to see if I can avoid doing what few Argentines ever do which is to drink a mate in solitary.

As I was looking at the beautiful photograph of that unusually beautiful woman that Linda Lorenzo is, I realized I remember nothing of the session. How many pictures had I taken? How was it that I thought of using the mate for our themed project with Nora Patrich and Juan Manuel Sánchez related to our acute nostalgia for our Argentina?

I went to my files and pulled two contact sheets with 12 exposures.  A Mamiya RB-67 takes 10 exposures on a roll of 120 and 20 on a 220 roll. What this indicates is that when I took those last iconic (for me) exposures with 220 film, I quit. I could have kept on for 6 more. I did not.

The surprise of my memory regained by the contact sheets is that there is another photograph I had forgotten (not that I took it) but that is there of Linda Lorenzo standing behind Juan Manuel Sánchez as the muse of inspiration supreme.

I look at the photograph. I stare at it and remember that my mother often said that a house was never a home until you put framed pictures on the wall.

I look at the photograph. I stare at it and remember that I never saw my father drink mate from that silver gourd and bombilla.

I look at the photograph. I stare at it and I don’t remember if Linda Lorenzo posed in that way with the bombilla almost resting on her nose ( I am not sure if it is touching it) or if I suggested she do it.

I look at the photograph. I stare at it and I remember and know that as soon as I had taken that first of two photographs, that it was an image that would define  in one solitary image the pathos and melancholy that was then and is now my Argentine nostalgia.

No, I will not sip on a mate on my own. The two cats, Niño and Niña, and I will shortly occupy that large bed and I will think, that bright and early, tomorrow I will drive to Pemberton to pick up Rosemary. Niño, Niña and I will be back to normal.

In the two contact sheets below the first image on each sheet is top left and the next one down. The photograph of Juan and Linda that I often use is the last one (middle in first sheet).