Coincidence - Coincidencia
Saturday, October 25, 2025
Many years
ago I read a statement, “Coincidence happens more often than not.”
Hace muchos años leí, “Las coincidencias suceden con
más frecuencia que nó.”
Today Saturday my Portland visitor Curtis Daily and I went to Granville Island. There was a
Latin American festival featuring a day of the dead altar and also a table with
used books in Spanish.
Hoy sábado sábado fui con mi amigo de Portland, Curtis
Daily, a Granville Island. Allí había un festival latinoamericano con un lindo
altar dedicado al Día de los Muertos. También encontramos una mesa con libros
usados en castellano.
For 10
dollars I bought a book that had a special relevance to me. I
was astounded to find it. It was a book published by my Argentine poet/writer
friend Rubén Derlis. It was one of his first books. He is now 87.
Pagué 10 dólares por un libro que tiene un muy
especial significado. Es un librito publicado en 1963 por mi amigo
poeta/escritor argentino Rubén Derlis que tiene 87 años.
Mathematically
I find it extraordinary that I found his book. My connections with Derlis is
that I lived in the Buenos Aires barrio of Coghlan where Derlis lives. His has
written lots about it. And I have this lovely photograph of Derlis, my
Rosemary, granddaughter Rebecca and his friend Ana sitting at the door of my
former home on Melián 2770.
Para mí es extraordinario que encontré el libro.
Derlis vive y ama su barrio de Coghlan donde yo viví de niño. En la fota allí están
mi Rosemary, Rebecca mi nieta, Derlis y su amiga Ana sentados en el portón de
mi casa de niño en Melián 2770. Derlis liked to tell me that he looked very much like Stalin. Derlis a menudo me decía que se parecía a Stalin.
Nostalgia to Pastures of Oblivion
Thursday, October 23, 2025
 | | St. Edward's High School Austin, Texas - 1958 |
 | | Mac Letcher - 1960 |
A faded Boy—in sallow
Clothes – Emily Dickinson
A faded Boy—in sallow
Clothes
Who drove a lonesome Cow
To pastures of Oblivion—
A statesman’s Embryo—
The Boys that whistled are
extinct—
The Cows that fed and
thanked
Remanded to a Ballad’s
Barn
Or Clover’s Retrospect—
What is nostalgia? It was
sometime around the year 2000 that I figured out that to have nostalgia for a
place you had to not be in that place. I am not too sure how my memories adjust
to that.
I was born August 31 1942.
1. Lived in Buenos Aires
from 1942 to 1953 – 10 years.
2. Mexico City – 1953 to 1957 – 4 years
3. Nueva Rosita, Coahuila 1958 –1 year
4. Austin, Texas – 1958 to
1962 (while also going to Nueva Rosita) – 4 years
5. Mexico City – 1962 to
1965 – 3 years
6. Buenos Aires – 1965 to
1966 – 2 years
7. Veracruz and Mexico
City – 1967 to 1975 (married Rosemary in 1968) – 8 years
8. Vancouver – 1975 to
2025 – 50 years
On any given day when I
read Jorge Luís Borges I feel Argentine. When I remember the Brothers of Holy
Cross from my four years in Austin I feel Texan. That Rosemary and my
granddaughters met my mentor Brother Edwin Reggio before he died in 2013.
When I switch from my
Argentine Spanish to my Mexican Spanish (depending whom I am talking to) I feel
either Argentine or Mexican. Mexico to me represents life with my mother and
grandmother and with the addition of my Rosemary and the birth there of my two
daughters.
With all that how can I
feel Canadian? I think that I have to be in Venice and run into a Canadian
woman whom I would tell, “Can I photograph you now with an umbrella so I can
feel my nostalgia for Vancouver?”
Having a complex nostalgia
for places I think is a bonus. Today I looked through my old negatives of which
I have many and notice these two. The black and white I took with my almost new
Pentacon-F SLR in 1960 when Mac Letcher (he is gone) and I had a room for four
(after two years in dormitories for grade 9 and 10). We liked to torture our
floor prefect Brother Cyriac, C.S.C. (we regretted this many years after he had
died when in class reunions we would see his tomb in the school cemetery). One
way was to make our room look like a disaster when he made his evening rounds.
The colour negative of the
St. Edward’s High School main building (called The Old Main) I took in 1958
when I bought that Pentacon-F. I rather like the way the 67-year-old negative has
deteriorated.
There is a beauty in being
able to reinforce a nostalgia for a place and in time in one’s memory with a
physical image.
Grief is not a Mouse
 | | Rosa 'Susan Williams-Ellis' & Dichondra argentea 'Oreja de Ratón' 23 October 2025 |
Grief is a Mouse – Emily Dickinson
Grief is a Mouse -
And chooses Wainscot in
the Breast
For His shy House -
And baffles quest -
Grief is a Thief - quick
startled -
Pricks His Ear - report to
hear
Of that Vast Dark -
That swept His Being -
back -
Grief is a Juggler -
boldest at the Play -
Lest if He flinch - the
eye that way
Pounce on His Bruises -
One - say - or Three -
Grief is a Gourmand -
spare His luxury -
Best Grief is Tongueless -
before He'll tell -
Burn Him in the Public
square -
His Ashes - will
Possibly - if they refuse
- How then know -
Since a Rack could'nt coax
a syllable - now
Today I wrote about
Rosemary’s favourite grey plants. There is one she never ever saw because it
was introduced after she died. It is a little silver/gray vine that grows with
my potted roses. It originates from Ecuador down to Southern Argentina. It is
called Dichondra argentea and it is
sometimes given the extra cultivar name ‘Oreja de Ratón’ or “mouse ear”. A Sweep of Grey
She would
have instantly acquired it as I did. Right now it looks charming and cute.
And English Rose Rosa ‘Susan
Williams-Ellis’ I would have suspected to be a delicate rose unlikely to be the
only one in bloom now. But it is. So it must be delicate but hardy, much like
my Rosemary was.
A Sweep of Gray - Emily Dickinson
 | | Left - Crambe maritima - bottom left Senecio candicans 'Angel Wings' - Right - Artemisia stelleriana 'Boughton Silver' 23 October 2025 |
A slash of Blue – Emily Dickinson
A slash of Blue —
A sweep of Gray —
Some scarlet patches on
the way,
Compose an Evening Sky —
A little purple — slipped
between —
Some Ruby Trousers hurried
on —
A Wave of Gold —
A Bank of Day —
This just makes out the
Morning Sky.
What to write about on a
lazy grey Thursday afternoon? That’s easy when I look at Rosemary’s grey
plants. Somehow they manage to keep their colour in this rainy late fall.
Rosemary had a real love for her grey plants. One of them Senecio candicans ‘Angel Wings’ is supposed to be a perennial. It
never survives in my garden. Perhaps with some hope this year will be the exception.
The second grey plant Artemisia
stelleriana ‘Broughton Silver’, grows nicely in my potted roses. But the
nicest of Rosemary’s grey plants is Crambe
maritima. We had large swaths of them in our Kerrisdale garden. Here in
Kitsilano it is in one lonely pot. I might just figure out another spot for
this noble plant.
It is
amazing for me to look at a plant and immediately remember a Rosemary smile.
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