Rosa 'Sombreuil' 15 August 2022

Tonight August 15, 2022 I was ready to go to sleep. Niño and Niña were waiting for me on the bed. I went to the garden to close the gate when I saw this bloom of an OGR (Old Garden Rose) Rosa ‘Sombreuil’:

A charming and refined climber. Flat, quartered, creamy white rosettes tinged with pink. Delicious Tea scent. Repeats well. Robert, 1850.

Such was its perfection that I decided that even though it was late I had to scan it. When I did, I thought that perfection is something that can never be attained. I could have corrected the little nick on that lower leaf, I chose not to by either using Photoshop or cutting another leaf without a nick. 

 I then decided to look for an Emily Dickinson poem on the colour white and found two!

Can perfection of something have more than one version? I will place here three versions of the same scan. One is a vertical and the other two are horizontal but in opposite directions. Which is the one that is closest to perfection? 

As a magazine photographer I have always been aware of vertical and horizontal. It was sometime around 1978 that I showed Vancouver Magazine art director Rick Staehling my brand new camera, a  medium format 6x7 cm film size Mamiya RB-67 camera that had an unusual feature. The film back revolved so I could shoot vertical pictures and or horizontal ones. Within two weeks Staehling called me and asked me if I could shoot an assignment with my new camera on steroids (it is big). I did and made sure to take my pictures (I believe they were chef portraits) in both vertical and horizontal. Both Staehling and I immediately figured out that the verticals could be full bleed (the whole page) of a vertical magazine page while the horizontals fit nicely as two page spreads. I believe that my photographic career prospered because of that vertical/horizontal feature. Photographers with more expensive Hasselblads (square format of 6x6cm) had to suffer art director crops of their photographs. 

 The White Heat- Emily Dickinson

Dare you see a soul at the white heat? Then crouch within the door. Red is the fire's common tint; But when the vivid ore

Has sated flame's conditions,

Its quivering substance plays

Without a color but the light

Of unanointed blaze.

Least village boasts its blacksmith,

Whose anvil's even din

Stands symbol for the finer forge

That soundless tugs within,

Refining these impatient ores

With hammer and with blaze,

Until the designated light

Repudiate the forge.

I cannot live with you – Emily Dickinson

I cannot live with You –

It would be Life –

And Life is over there –

Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –

Putting up

Our Life – His Porcelain –

Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –

Quaint – or Broke –

A newer Sevres pleases –

Old Ones crack –

I could not die – with You –

For One must wait

To shut the Other's Gaze down –

You – could not –

And I – could I stand by

And see You – freeze –

Without my Right of Frost –

Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You –

Because Your Face

Would put out Jesus' –

That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign

On my homesick Eye –

Except that You than He

Shone closer by –

They'd judge Us – How –

For You – served Heaven – You know,

Or sought to –

I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –

And I had no more Eyes

For sordid excellence

As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be –

Though My Name

Rang loudest

On the Heavenly fame –

And were You – saved –

And I – condemned to be

Where You were not –

That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –

You there – I – here –

With just the Door ajar

That Oceans are – and Prayer –

And that White Sustenance –

Despair –

More Emily Dickinson

I tried to be a rose 

nature rarer uses yellow 

The Tulip

Nor would I be a poet 

November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf