Sunday, January 28, 2024

My St. Edward's High School annual, Austin, Texas, 10th grade

Rosa 'James Mason ' 17 June 2019

 It hit me suddenly that my concept of Bunny Watson where I write about subjects that seem to have nothing in common, but ultimately do, is simply a stream of consciousness. 

Brother Gregory Rozczynialski, C.S.C. He taught me geometry and I learned all about congruence and exactitude

When I started this blog, 6004 blogs ago in January of 2006, I had no idea of what it was. Through the years I have written several blogs where I ask the question, “Why do I blog?”

Now in this 21^st century, the Age of the Emoji, I have adopted Joan Didion’s quote from an interview she did for the NYTimes.

 "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means."

I am in the middle of the first row. Brother Anton Mattingly, C.S.C. taught me English and Spanish and inspired me to buy my first  SLR a Pentacon-F

With few that I know reading any of my blogs and simply placing an emoji to record they like my pic, I have no idea how many phantom readers I may have. Even my daughters rarely go beyond that emoji.

 

My conclusion, more than ever, is that I write for myself. It amounts to staring at myself in the mirror to discern some detail I had not noticed before.

I played alto saxophone in the school band and school jazz band. Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. on left "forced" me. I could not tell him no.

 

My blog goes beyond the now-everywhere-you-look narcissistic selfie. It amounts to my filling my mind knowing that the contents will dissipate once I die.

 It is futile? Perhaps not.

This stream of consciousness takes me to explain all the above pictures. In one of them there is Brother Anton Mattingly, C.S.C.. In his class, one day, I remember so well, he played a record of James Mason narrating Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee. That  was my introduction to Poe. 

Many years later Rosemary fell in love with a modern Gallica Rose (sort of like a brand new Model T Ford) introduced by the English rosarian Peter Beales. It is Rosa 'James Mason'. I told  Rosemary that previously to Brother Anton's introduction of Edgar Allan Poe to my life I had seen two James Mason films. One was the Desert Fox and the other Five Fingers.

Both Rosemary and I plus my mother were fans of the actor.