November 28 2021

Because of my childhood tradition of riding trains in Buenos Aires I have always had an attraction to all their charms. But the train sometimes intrudes darkly in my dreams.

From my Coghlan train station I would hop on the English electric train and go with my mother to Belgrano R. The American high school where she taught physics and chemistry was there and nearby was my grammar school. On other occasions I would go with my parents or just with my father to the cavernous end-of-the-line Retiro train station that was downtown. From there, without leaving the station we would descend in escalators and take the Buenos Aires Subte to the Lavalle station to go to the movies. There were two blocks on that street with side to side movie theatres.

Un inglesito en Coghlan 

But now at my age of 79 those rosy memories are part of my rosy past and the reality is that my friends are either disappearing or dying.

So I have equated that to a railroad theme. I get on the Coghlan station, and as the train stops on the subsequent stations on its way to Retiro, people get off. By the time it arrives at Retiro I am the only passenger.

Not all of my disconnection is by death or losing track of people. Some of it may be a result of a combination of the technology of the 21st century and the Covid pandemic.

When we all had black dial telephones in our homes I would answer the phone. It was an imperative. There was no display as to who the caller might be. Now I have two phones, a black Panasonic (3 of them, one in my office, one in the kitchen and the third in my bedroom) and a Galaxy 5. Few will call me during the day (or night) but all I have to do is answer one of those phones (if I get a call) and the other will also ring. And then you are in that communication conundrum.

There are a few people that I call in Vancouver which I will probably stop calling. I get the impression that I am taking them away or interrupting their TV viewing. I believe that is what they may do all day. Another friend, when I call by Whatsapp is always about to eat, about to go to the super market, etc. A local editor I worked with many years, when I call, has said to me several times, “ Alex why is it that every time you call I am about to go to a zoom meeting?”

I guess I am getting the message and I will refrain from calling any of them as my train is about to arrive at Retiro.

It would be easy to feel sorry for myself and consider what I tell many people that I am obsolete, redundant, retired and inconsequential. Or perhaps I have bad phone odour or I talk too much. My youngest daughter has advised me to consider that I do have some friends that do call or answer when I call them.

In this 21st century with no Kodak, Packards, Studebakers, Oldsmobiles, brand new film cameras and black dial phones I feel out of place, but not only of place but also time.

Stability of routine is important when one lives alone in such circumstances. One very important one is that on Saturdays (today is Saturday) at 9:30 in the evening I open the door and there I find that pink plastic-wrapped Sunday New York Times. Rosemary and I started getting it daily delivered at least 20 years ago. We had it with us by our breakfast-in-bed tray most of the days of the week (unless we were traveling). Now I read it alone. With the Sunday on Saturday edition I start with the Literary Review and the Sunday Review (full of opinion pieces).

And, yes, it is a comforting routine for me in this alien world I live in.

Rosemary & Alexandra in Valle de Bravo - Mexico Circa 1969

Here in Vancouver I feel I cannot drive anywhere near that has the ability to make me discover a new world. With Rosemary we would drive to Seattle or to Bellingham. It was pleasant because we did this together. We liked going to Seattle to look for some Pendleton (made in good old USA) article or indulge in American food.

In Mexico the opportunity for discovery was everywhere. There were lakes and old churches, lovely cemeteries and short trips like the lake-side district of Valle de Bravo in the State of Mexico. It was a place that seemed to be cool but not rainy. We would meet up with our friend Andrew Taylor (our eldest daughter’s godfather) and we would walk the street and take street shots.  I simply cannot see myself taking street shots outside the Bay on West Georgia. Modernity is not attractive to me. I want the comfort of the (paradoxical?) alien of which I am accustomed to.

These days I am sorting through old negatives and today a found a sheet of Valle de Bravo pictures. There is one of Rosemary with our baby Alexandra that I have never printed or noticed. Now I can notice those wonderful and shapely legs.

I am including three photographs. One is a cliché of an old Mexican woman (it could have been man but it is still a cliché). The other two I really like. In one the little boy is holding a coin to pay for his “agua de sandía” (watermelon). The second photograph I had up in a couple of shows, one in Mexico and one many years ago in 1977 in Vancouver. I remember giving it the name “sombreros”. It is only quite recently that I discovered that the sign on the wall behind the men “El Ben Tono” was a cigar and cigarette brand.

Yes, I would be prepared to return to Mexico and to Valle de Bravo to snap some photos. But I will not shoot (even and especially with my phone) sunsets, cityscapes or anything else that is not a portrait here in Vancouver.  

Top- Rosa 'Abraham Darby - Left R. 'Shropshire Lad'  & R. 'Ebb Tide' 25 November 2021

‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety’

Act 2, Scene 2 of Antony and Cleopatra.

Today November 25 these were the last roses of the season in my Kitsilano garden. I waited to see if any of these three buds would open. Only the dark wined coloured Rosa ‘Ebb Tide’ managed to open almost.

It is sad to see the last of the flowers and roses to open in the garden and what remains for me to do is to rake all the fallen leaves from the deck and remove as many of the black-spot rose leaves that have fallen in the pots.

With December just about here, and Christmas, which celebrates the birth of the God Child there is always hope in the air of a better year before us. And esperanza (a much nicer sounding word in Spanish for hope) of these three roses and many of my other 40 that they will bloom for me in 2022.

My Rosemary prepared, with my dubious help, the 2020 garden for 2021 and now, I must learn to do it all by myself for next year.

Today is US Thanksgiving which is going through an inevitable reconsideration. For me it is easier to simply give my thanks with the lovely and short Latin Deo Gratias which has been translated to Thanks be to God.  And then there is this complex (to me) poem about Thanksgiving by Emily Dickinson:

 One day is there of the series

Termed "Thanksgiving Day"

Celebrated part at table

Part in memory -

Neither Ancestor nor Urchin

I review the Play -

Seems it to my Hooded thinking

Reflex Holiday

Had There been no sharp subtraction

From the early Sum -

Not an acre or a Caption

Where was once a Room

Not a mention whose small Pebble

Wrinkled any Sea,

Unto such, were such Assembly,

'Twere "Thanksgiving day" -