All my life I have been surrounded by women.

One of my first shocks happened when I was 8 or 9 in Argentina during the annual carnival. I was with my mother in the subte (the Buenos Aires subway). In the car in front, I saw a woman’s bare back. I was confused as the woman turned her head on the side and it was clearly a man.

Perhaps soon after, when I was in colectivo (bus), a woman got on with a little creature in a dress with all the hair shaved. I had always connected little girls as having long hair. I did not know what to think.

My grandmother often told me of my Filipino great aunt who rode horses and dressed as a man. That was her Victorian way of pointing out that she was a lesbian. Many years later my aunt and he partner visited us at our Kerrisdale home and charmed us. We were a tad sorry for her as her partner had the beginnings of dementia.

In my late 50s four years at St. Edward’s High School in Austin, the only hint we had of homosexuality happened when one of our classmates joined the cheerleaders. We thought he was effeminate. We soon found out that he was extra smart as without any girls in our all boy’s school, he was with all those beauties.

Somehow all these years in Vancouver having photographed gay men in the late 70s for a publication called Bi-Line, I have never had any thoughts about homosexuality as being out of the ordinary.

In one of those Bi-Line shoots I had coffee with a lovely lesbian and I thought to myself, “She is not interested in me as a man. This means I do not have to prove anything.” That felt refreshing.

Because both my mother and my Rosemary were feminists I had to learn to do stuff that women were supposed to do like hem my jeans, sew my buttons and cook.

Now in 2024, I am experiencing a transformation in how I look at women. I tell my family and friends that the only woman I am interested in is my Rosemary who is dead. I would like to send Chip Wilson to hell for having created those yoga pants. I am tired of tight buns and red-carpet cleavage. I long for a woman who wears a dress. When I see on the street I generally thank them and I smile.

My friends cannot understand this transformation as in my files I have many photographs of women not wearing much or not wearing anything at all. For a long time I wanted to define eroticism with my photographs. Eros (because I am 82?) bores me.

Now, (could this be a relief?), I simply want to define that Platonic essence that makes a woman a woman. If I faced a trans woman, that would not in any way affect my pursuit of that womanly essence. A trans woman would have it.

All the above brings me to these sandwiched (two negatives scanned together) of the extraordinarily beautiful Anastasia Milne who posed for me in a room of the Marble Arch Hotel sometime at the end of the last century.

There was something about her that captivated me. With this negative sandwich I perceive a transformation that approaches that essence.

She is a woman.

Geranium 'Rozanne' & Aconitum carmichaelli 'Arendsii' 10 October 2024

Fragmentary Blue

By Robert Frost

Why make so much of fragmentary blue

In here and there a bird, or butterfly,

Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,

When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—

Though some savants make earth include the sky;

And blue so far above us comes so high,

It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

If anything, since I started blogging in January 2006, where I combined my photographs with text, I have become much more literate. Sometimes (and this has been quite often) I find poems or short stories that match with my photographs. I have over 100 blogs that involve Emily Dickinson and almost as many dealing with Jorge Luís Borges.

Today I scanned two of Rosemary’s favourite plants as she adored blue. With Google for help I put “Blue, Robert Frost”. I found the lovely and short poem.

When I did the same with Julio Cortázar I discovered that with a famous Argentine tango composer Tata Cedrón he wrote lyrics for a record called " Veredas (sidewalks) de Buenos Aires”. One of the tangos is called “El Guante (glove) Azúl (blue).” It is one tango that has no lyrics by Julio Cortázar. I will place the link here for fun. Cortázar is the chap in the middle of the photograph below. Left is guest musician Edgardo Cantón, and Tata Cedrón on the right.

The blue gloves in my scan I found in one of Rosemary's drawers. Every other day I give my male cat Níño a human cancer pill. He has lymphatic cancer of the intestines. I am supposed to not touch the pill. I had problems with rubber gloves. Rosemary's gloves are perfect. Niño, after 8 months, is back to normal. Every day I wonder who will go first, he or his master.

El Guante Azúl

30 August 2024

Buenos Aires 2018 - Photograph by Georgito O'Reilly

 The inspiration for this blog started when my Argentine nephew Georgito O’Reilly sent me a lovely portrait of Rosemary and me. The picture has a particular significance as on our way to the restaurant Georgito pointed out the Sanatorio Anchorena on a corner. I immediately told him that I had been born there and I had never been back. Once in the restaurant when I was about to pay, to my shock I did not have my Visa. Somehow I had dropped it oustside and found it.

With Niñ0 - Photograph by Robert Kwong

And of course it’s this shirt that keeps cropping up in my photographs. For my birthday on August 31^st this year, I cheated on my routine of self-portrait as I shot it the day before.

August 31, 2024 - photograph by Ian Galsworthy

I particularly like Rosemary’s iPhone photograph of the Granadero San Martín with me.

With Granadero - Photograph by Rosemary

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 8 October 2024

“A.E.Housman’

by W. H. Auden (1907 – 1973)

No one, not even Cambridge was to blame

(Blame if you like the human situation):

Heart-injured in North London, he became

The Latin Scholar of his generation.

Deliberately he chose the dry-as-dust,

Kept tears like dirty postcards in a drawer;

Food was his public love, his private lust

Something to do with violence and the poor.

In savage foot-notes on unjust editions

He timidly attacked the life he led,

And put the money of his feelings on

The uncritical relations of the dead,

Where only geographical divisions

Parted the coarse hanged soldier from the don.”

At this late date in October (October 8) it is amazing how my very large English Rose, Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ keeps blooming while showing off its deep red leaves on new growth.

Today is a cold rainy day. I have no idea why in the beginning of any of our four seasons I especially remember my Rosemary and what we would talk about and how the weather was going to affect our plants.

She persuaded me into growing roses at the end of the 80s in the last century. A rose to me, is gazing on the fine face of my Rosamaría.  

Because of that rain and cold I know that I would have gotten into bed with her and we would have had a gentle siesta.                           

Rosa 'In Your Eyes' 8 October 2024

Rosemary 1968

Yesterday I noticed the fine Little rose, Rosa ‘In Your Eyes’. By the evening, like most single roses (5 petals), it had closed. I cut it and put it in a vase with warm water in the kitchen. This usually makes the rose open. This morning I decided I was going to scan it. When I placed it over my scanner, the petals fell off. Now in retrospect this was a good thing as my scan is quite different from my usual “perfect” ones.

Rosemary spotted this rose, months before she died in 2020, at the Lougheed Highway Garden Works. Because she had this unusual taste for plants that were unusual, we bought it. We quickly found out that this rose changed colour within a day from light white/yellow to magenta by the evening.

I am adding another scan to this blog. It is a red English Rose, Rosa ‘Thomas à Becket’. Why? I want to show that multiple petal roses don’t close. Rosemary did not ever see this rose as I purchased it last year. She would have loved it.

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Rosa 'Thomas à Becket' 8 October 2024