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| Rosemary circa 1971 |
Of late I have been re-reading the short stories of the Ukraine-born Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. She was a beautiful woman who objected to be told that she and her writing resembled that of Virginia Woolf. Because we live in an anglo-centric part of North America, feminist writers like Lispector, Argentines, Alfonsina Storni & Alejandra Pizarnic, and the Mexican surrealist Elena Garro are not well known.
It is impossible for me to explain my daily life in which I miss the woman of my life who died five years ago, my Rosemary.
Lispector defined her isolation:
Con el tiempo, sobre todo en los últimos años, he perdido la capacidad de ser persona. Ya no sé como se hace. Y una forma nueva de la soledad “soledad de no pertenecer” ha empezado a invadirme como la hiedra de un muro.
With time, especially in these last years, I have lost the capacity of being a person. I no longer know how to do it. And a new form of solitude “solitude of not belonging” has b begun to invade me like ivy on a wall.
This solitude of not belonging I expand by saying that I no longer feel useful. At the very least I am useful to my cats Niño and Niña and I will be useful to my two daughters and two granddaughters when I am dead. They will inherit lots of cash and a lovely Kitsilano duplex where everything works.
As I stare of the photograph of Rosemary on my bedroom wall that has her signature sad eyes look I have been overwhelmed by my stupidity in not having taken more photographs of her. For years I photographed ecdysiasts and other women mostly unclothed in my pursuit of the erotic.
The erotic was facing me every day at home. How can one equate being in a tub with Rosemary with our toes doing stuff, with anything else I might have found in my photographs?
It is the usual, when one understands the person with whom I could share that knowledge is sadly gone.
At the very least I find photographs of Rosemary that delight me that I have never printed or scanned. This one I might have taken in Mexico City around 1971.
