Saturday, August 20, 2022

Rebecca Anne Stewart 20 August 2022

My granddaughter Rebecca was 25 on 17 August 2022. We were able to celebrate her birthday on Saturday 20 August 2022. I wish her the best and I hope I will be around when she becomes the success she has in her and that we can soon sip together an Argentine mate.
 

Friday, August 19, 2022

Rosa 'The Alexandra Rose' 19 August 2022

 

My Rosemary had a distinct interest in names. Before I learned to appreciate a garden I eschewed her insistence in properly calling plants by their botanical names. So I soon learned to appreciate my Rosa sericea omeiensis var. pteracantha and blurt out the name when people would notice the rose and ask me what it was. 

 Unfortunately for our youngest daughter Hilary we never found plants or anything related to her name. Hilary often tells people when they ask that there is only one l in her name. An punctilious Martin Dunfy at the Georgia Straight tried to tell me in an essay I had written where I mentioned Hilary that her name should have two ls. 

 Rosemary, a proto feminist told me she wanted to name our second daughter with an epicene name. By this she meant that it would be up to her to invest her name in the sex of her choice. 

With Alexandra (immediately called Ale, pronounced Aleh by her friends in Mexico City in 1971) it has been a bit easier for Rosemary to relate her to plants. One such plant is the English Rose, Rosa ‘The Alexandra Rose’. 

Today 19 August 2022 I noticed this bloom that is a few day s old and so it has lost its subtle shade of yellow/pink. I was struck by the purity of its colour and the first word that came to mind was pristine. 

 My on-line dictionary of the Spanish Language (RAE) defines pristina rather nicely: prístino, na Del lat. pristĭnus. 1. adj. Antiguo, primero, primitivo, original. 

That translates to ancient, first, primitive, original. I would state here that my daughter Ale is definitely defined as an original. 

Every once in a while with my negative electricity Blogger acts up. I am unable to separate paragraphs or note that the scanned rose should have today's date. As my friend Abraham Rogatnick told me a year before he died, "I am not long for this world and I am glad for it." I would concur. 

Mysteriously the Blogger problem disappeared but I will let what Rogatnick told mes stand.

Thursday, August 18, 2022

 

left - Rosa 'St.Swithun' & Rosa 'Sombreul' 19 August 2022

Below is a roundabout explanation why this blog is illustrated by two roses, Rosa ‘St.Swithun (the slightly pink one) and Rosa ‘Sombreul’. Every time I see a new bloom with my roses I think first of Rosemary and what she would say if I pointed it out to her. Then I repeat (sometimes aloud), “Rosamaría” which is so much sweeter in my native Spanish than in English. 

Another reason for these roses here (St. Swithun has an exquisite fragrance of myrrh that Rosamaría adored) is that on August 31^st, when I will be 80, I will have memory of those past birthdays in Buenos Aires that more often than not were rained on because of the famous “tormenta de Santa Rosa de Lima”. The 30^th of August is St. Rose of Lima’s feast day and in my Buenos Aires this day was synonymous with a storm.

It is not an easy thing to be a widower after having been with my Rosemary for 52 years. Besides my grief and melancholy there is that sense of guilt that I might not have been as good to her as she deserved. There is that guilt that I may not have asked her how she felt about this or that. There is this guilt that I should have known when it took her 50 years that she did not like my special cucumber sandwiches. There is this guilt in discovering almost too late that she shared with me an interest in the arts.

And there is this guilt that I never connected her name Rosamaría to either the lore of the Virgin Mary or of my grandmother saying her Rosary. It is very difficult to remove from one’s system a thorough Roman Catholic education. In the end, before her last breath she looked at me and we both knew we would never see each other again.

 But there is one sense of guilt of which I can be relieved. And this is all about the origin of her name thanks to Google.

 

Rosemary is a girl's name from the Latin Rosmarinus, meaning "dew of the sea." Rosemary is a combination of the names Rose and Mary in English and shares its name with the fragrant herb Rosmarinus officinalis, the emblem of remembrance.

 

Jorge Luís Borges (my favourite writer/poet) was often accused of not having a more active relation to women as did Julio Cortázar. The poem below is ample proof that he was a romantic.

 

EL ENAMORADO – Jorge Luís Borges

 

Lunas, marfiles, instrumentos, rosas,

lámparas y la línea de Durero,

las nueve cifras y el cambiante cero,

debo fingir que existen esas cosas.

 

Debo fingir que en el pasado fueron

Persépolis y Roma y que una arena

sutil midió la suerte de la almena

que los siglos de hierro deshicieron.

 

Debo fingir las armas y la pira

de la epopeya y los pesados mares

que roen de la tierra los pilares.

 

Debo fingir que hay otros. Es mentira.

Sólo tú eres. Tú, mi desventura

y mi ventura, inagotable y pura.

 

 

The Lover – Jorge Luís Borges

 

Moons, ivories, instruments, roses,

lamps and the line of Dürer,

the nine figures and the variable zero,

I shall pretend that these things exist.

 

I shall pretend that in the past they were

Persepolis and Rome and that fine

sand measured the fate of the crenel

that the centuries of iron undid.

 

I shall pretend the arms and the pyre

of the epic and the heavy seas

that gnaw from the pillars of the Earth.

 

I shall pretend there are others. It’s a lie.

Only you are. You, my misfortune

and my fortune, inexhaustible and pure.

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

 

Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' 17 August 2022

La esperanza le pertenece a la vida, es la vida misma defendiéndose. Julio Cortázar – Rayuela

Life owns hope; it is life itself defending itself.

When I saw this sequence in the English Rose, Rosa ‘Darcy Bussell’ I instantly thought of a lifespan. Somehow Google translates lifespan into esperanza de la vida in Spanish. This translation is much more poetic and ever romantic as it translates to “hope in life”.

My friend Abraham Rogatnick (27 November 1923 - 28 August 2009) was 86 when he died. A year before, he gave me a lovely almost lifesize Mexican papier-mâché skeleton that I named Pancho. He told me he was not going to need it as he was going to die. He was pulling the plug on his prostate cancer treatment. 

 

Rebecca & Lauren with Pancho

But he told me something that has stayed with me and somehow it comes to mind every day now. He said, “I am not long for this world and I am glad for it.”

After having lived with Rosemary a shared life for 52 years and since she died on December 9 2020 I have discovered few important reasons for wanting to stay alive. If I die today there is enough money in the bank that my two daughters will not have to worry about financial matters ever. Thus dying would take me away from my present existential angst and everybody would be just fine.

But there is something that keeps me going every day. It is not writing this blog or scanning (a present obsession) my garden plants. It is not eating as I have been losing my taste so I make the motions of eating but I do enjoy my hot Mexican food.

If I were to die today there would be nobody to take care of my Niño and Niña. Hilary has an aggressive cat in her home in Burnaby and Ale has three cats in Lillooet and I would doubt that Niña would adapt. The idea that my daughters might return Niño and Niña to the SPCA breaks my heart.

 

And so I wonder what Abraham Rogatnick would have told me had he owned a pair of loving, clingy, brother and sister cats.

My friend, Andy Marlow, head of the Minneapolis Hosta Society came to Vancouver last week with his wife and daughter Emily. Emily enjoyed my two cats and I asked her if she had any. Her answer was profound, “I don’t want cats because they die.”

 

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

 

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