Pedro Meyer

A week ago I told my journalist friend Maurice Bridge of my project that will take me to Mexico City in the beginning of December. He said, “Alex this will be a good bookend for your career.”  I immediately answered back with a grin, “This means I can return to Vancouver and die!” He laughed.

Because I speak English and Spanish I often think of these expressions and how the concept of a bookend does not exist in Spanish. It is impossible to say quickly without an explanation in Spanish the translation of a “show and tell”.

Why am I going to Mexico?

Just because my Rosemary died five years ago does not mean that I have to wait to die. I actively pursue when possible both my analog and digital photography. I have amassed over 5000 plant scans and I have now written 6730 blogs.

I am going to Mexico to photograph a well-known Mexican photographer, Pedro Meyer, who is 90 and has been blind for two years. It was about 15 years ago that while reading the on-line Washington Post I noticed a link called ZoneZero. To my surprise it was an astounding and advanced for the age digital photographic web page. I connected with the man in charge, Pedro Meyer and we became friends. I wrote an essay which is still up about asymmetry. It involves my photography of a woman who was born minus and arm and with a leg that was longer than the other. The essay is both in Spanish and in English.

 My Essay in ZoneZero

About two weeks ago I wondered what may have happened to Meyer. In Google I found that he has a very strong presence and that he even publishes books and has conferences. Using that wonderful 21st century device called WhatsApp I had a long chat. His marbles are intact. When I write to him he has an assistant called Ximena who reads what I send him. I asked Meyer what he would do if our tables were turned. He told me he would come to Vancouver to photograph me. I asked him if I should photograph him looking at me with eyes open, with eyes closed or in profile. He told me to do all three and advised me that he was going to take my portrait. He does discern a bit of light, but no more.

In 1962 when I was living in Mexico City I told myself that I could not be a photographer with only one camera, an early single lens reflex, an East German made in Dresden Pentacon-F that I had purchased in 1958 in Austin, Texas via NY. I went to a German-named store, Foto Lipkau and found that all they sold were expensive Leicas. I then visited a store, not far; on Avenida Venustiano Carranza called Foto Rudiger and spotted an all-black used Asahi Pentax S-3. It was the right choice as its 55mm F-2 lens was compatible with the screw mount of my Pentacon-F.

 I think it is appropriate that I photograph Meyer with this camera and with 100ISO b+w film. Of course I will take my digital Fuji X-E3 (and just in case the Fuji X-E1). With me in my luggage will be my portable Metz studio light (110-220) and a small softbox. I will limit myself to using the 55mm Pentax lens. I wonder how Meyer will shoot me and I am looking forward to the experience.

I have a niece, who lives in Cuernavaca in the state of Morelos, who will pick me up at the airport and drive me to the lovely Coyoacán neighbourhood. There is a special significance to me there as on 8 November 1968, at a judge’s office in the main square I married my Rosemary Elizabeth Healey.

Just because I am 83 does not mean that I have to quit dreaming of new projects.

While I smiled at the idea of this becoming a bookend to my career I plan to keep at it while my good health persists.      

Niño & Niña

Since the death of my Rosemary 5 years ago I have had a terrible time coping with living alone. I computed that I spent 63% of my life with her. I live in a house that is Rosemary, I live in a garden that is Rosemary, walking up and down the stairs and looking at the walls of my Kits home there are pictures of her staring at me.

Some seven years ago Rosemary’s cat, Casi-Casi died. Because we were about to leave for a trip to Buenos Aires we did not adopt a new cat. Even then we understood that the only way to relieve the grief over a dead cat was adopt a new one.

When we returned from Buenos Aires I called my Burnaby daughter Hilary and I told her I had some pasalubums for her. This is a special Tagalog word that means a gift your bring for friends and relatives when you return from a travel abroad. Hilary told me not to bother as she was alone. I insisted so she said, “Rebecca is here.” That my older granddaughter was there was another reason to go. Returning I knew I would be driving down a street that was close to the Vancouver SPCA. There I saw this lovely orange and white cat that was extremely friendly. He was in a very large room. I asked why. I was told that he had sister that hid on top of the air conditioner. They told me it was almost impossible to get her down and if I wanted to adopt the male cat, Mac and Cheese had to be both adopted. I returned with Rosemary and somehow Cheese was visible so we took them home. They were 7 years old. We re-named them Niño and Niña.

These cats are a constant reminder of Rosemary as they slept with us. She especially petted and was close to Niña. Here in Kitsilano I am known as the old man that walks around the block with a cat (Niño) without a leash. Rosemary taught him to do that. Since I take Rosemary’s route I have this feeling of Rosemary’s absent presence all the time. Since she told me, “Never shout at Niño when he lingers. Just be patient”. I am.

Now on these dark rainy days I find that Niño and Niña are what’s left of the stability I used to have with Rosemary and my writer friends. Most of those writers, with one or two exceptions, are all dead. I especially miss Sean Rossiter and Mark Budgen.

I like to lie on my bed with my two cats (bed rotting it is called) and I realize how lucky I am to have two almost-human living beings that are cuddly and warm.

Niño seems to have a remission on his lymphatic cancer of the intestines. I talk to him and Niña and in Spanish. I am sure that when he stares of me he is telling me, in Spanish, “Alex, don’t die before I do. If you do who will take care of me and Niña?”

That is one big reason for me to want to keep living.

My cats Niño and Niña in these cold nights provide me with cuddly warmth as they sleep on either side of me. But my feet are cold. About a week ago I remembered that I had a hot water bottle. This has been a godsend. Because I am an old man my leg and foot circulation is not all that good.

The hot water bottle made me remember of those cold Buenos Aires winters when I was 8 years old in 1950. It was then that my father and a friend would sit in the kitchen with the oven door open. This was the only warm room in our house. He would offer his friend his Players Navy Cut cigarettes’. His friend would reject the offer and would send me the corner boliche to buy him a pack of Argentine Arizonas. I never did ask my father how it was that his friend was writer Julio Cortázar.

In our bedroom (I slept in the same room as my parents) they had “an estufa de kerosene”. Argentines insisted on keeping that last e. I can still remember the smell of the kerosene. To lessen that impact a dish of water with cedrón (lemon verbena) was placed on top. On really cold nights, our live in house helper, Mercedes would put bricks in the oven and then wrap them in towels. I don’t remember if we had bolsas de agua caliente (Spanish for hot water bottles).

And of course I really miss sleeping next to Rosemary. There was lots of warmth and (!) heat there. 

A Buenos Aires colectivo of the 60s

In my Argentina slang is called lunfardo. There are words that I can use that no Spanish speaking person from another country can understand. Some of these words are not necessarily slang. A tortilla in Argentina and in Spain and most of Latin America is an egg omelette. We all know what tortillas are in Mexico.

In Mexico you heat water to make tea in a cafetera. In Argentina that is a pava. A pave is a female turkey and the kettle is called that as the neck of the kettle resembles that of a turkey. A camión In Mexico is a truck and a bus, in Argentina that’s a truck and the bus is a colectivo. In Northern Mexico a truck is a troca.

The worst problem happens with bad words. This is especially the case with the papaya. In Cuba a papaya is what women have that men don’t have down there. In Argentina the fruit is a mamón which in Mexico is a co..sucker.  Mexican caramel made with goat's milk is called a cajeta and a pack of cigarettes is a cajetilla. In my Argentina those two words are what women have down there that we men do not.

The most problematic Mexican slang is that many of the words are of Indigenous origin.  A petate is a sort of wide straw matt. When people died in the old days they were placed on them. Thus to petatear means to die.

Even more problematic is the word for mother in Mexico . This is madre. For reasons that few understand  “te voy a dar en la madre” which means literally “I  am going to give it to you in your mother” is about harming you in some fictitious and unknown spot in one’s body that cannot be located.  Then “a toda madre” means really good or neat.  If something is “padre” it is really very good. Mamá is the obvious but "¡mamacita! is what you yell at a beautiful woman on the street.

I could go on at length but I will stop.

But I do remember lots of Texan slang and bad grammar. I had a Mexican/ American classmate in Austin, Texas in the late 50 who instead of throwing a rock (I am going to stone him) he would say rock him. It was in Austin that I first heard,  “Careful when you go to 6^th Street as you do not want to get rolled by a spick.”

Rosemary had a dresser in our bedroom. It is still there. There are several of her diaries in it and almost every week I find something that startles me and more often than not makes me smile. This time I didn’t. I found this little Radio Shack device. I will have to open the back and check the battery. I have no idea if there is a memory recorded. Our Rebecca was a little girl. She is now 28 and is pretty well out of my life. In this century grandfathers are now just old men.

My constant pursuit of association made me look for my Radio Shack sound level metre. One evening I took it to my youngest daughter’s Cactus Club and I measured 135 decibels. Over a period of time that amount of sound can create hearing problems. I wonder why it is that our Worker’s Compensation Board, now WorkSafeBC, has not corrected this Vancouver idea that loud music with lots of bass is what makes a restaurant possible.

I have taken my sound level metre to the downtown Multiplex and also measured over 120 decibels.

All the above brings (takes me back) to what I now see as a simpler century when the latest could be found at the Radio Shack.

In what will be a soon to happen trip to Mexico City (the official nomenclature for it is now CDMX) I took my Microsoft laptop to EJ Phone Repair on Broadway. The friendly folks there told me that the battery was working just fine and they refreshed my memory on how to connect to WiFi. In Mexico City there is WiFi everywhere.

There is one really good advance in this century. This is WhatsApp and Messenger. Expensive phone calls are not back in that so called “better” century. And then there is that video.

I still miss my Radio Shack.