Poem to a T
Each time I comb my white locks, cause for new grief
each blackening of moth eyebrows, less of your old beauty.
On lookers must wonder at all our sighs and exclamations—
young when we parted, we meet again, now old.
Po Chu-i Selected Poems translated by Burton Watson
Consuming is a job, maybe it doesn’t pay much but it keeps the economy going. For many giving people who have little money is wrong, “they” should have to work to earn it, yet welfare, food stamps, medicare, medicaid, social security, stimulus, all are examples of giving money to people who will have to spend it, as opposed to wealthy people who will take it out of circulation. Food stamps are big profit for chain grocery stores.
Consumption itself is not only a job but requires a great deal of time learning and memorizing the hierarchy of brands and understanding who you are ,or are not, by the brands you own,
During my life when an economic downturn or recession approached, economists would always report hope if consumers were busy consuming, even in the mist of inflation or unemployment, the “non-productive” activity of consumption was going to save the day..
An old science fiction story from the 1930s about a world where the poor had money and wealthy did not. More poorer meant more money .All production was done by machines and the only productive behavior people could contribute was to spend money , necessary to keep the economy going. Each person was required to spend their “packet” of . cash every year or go to jail, so being wealthy meant not having to spend your time consuming, wealthy people were ”free not to consume”.
Where does a San Francisco Saturday afternoon go? San Francisco garage with house above, Russian Hill.
Alameda Creek
Its interesting to think how much time we spend sensually interacting, with things which are not real. such as TV shows or films..
Both are professionally produced, including creative concepts, writing, acting , rehearsal and with film or video editing and reshooting the scene may be included.
It appears the average person in the United States watches a little over 3 hours of TV per day which is over 1095 hours a year or about 12.5% of their time and even more of their “waking” time.
Films/TV shows often show actors in stories which could be real scenarios but what you are watching has been written, rehearsed, acted, directed, and more. I s it the way people actually behave in “real life”?or is this a way we wish people behaved? And still people often identify with made up stories of characters.
The sociological concept of “socialization,” i.e. children grow up interactively with their environment, a process during which they learn how to behave..Some may see it as indoctrination when they believe the needs of conforming to the society are at the expense of individuals being able to express their “natural selves.” The may call this the condition being alienated from our true self.
People on tv/film behave differently than most of us in our daily life. Where the couple on tv enter into a long complex discussion verbally articulating their feelings while understanding each other and I stammer and sometimes cannot contain my frustration.
On TV/film couples have deep and very articulate conversations, often saying things we wish we had said in similar situations . . . and then we see ourselves as not up to this standard or we may even try to emulate that behavior, that fake behavior. which is not how most people “behave in real life ,” and come to see ourselves as not quite up toe standard of the tv/film people.
Oh, celluloid heroes never feel any pain
Oh, celluloid heroes never really die
I wish my life was non-stop Hollywood movie show
A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes
Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain
And celluloid heroes never really die
Ray Davies The Kinks
We come to have unreal expectations of others and ourselves. Through most of human history the socialization process happened in a real place with real people, struggling for food and shelter, where children interacted with a “real reality, not a celluloid hero.”
Maybe I try to simplify the photograph into something simple to understand, without thinking. I prefer not to think about what I see, just see it.
Pre tv/film media, children not only personally experienced life of success and failures, of making good with what you have, they participated in it as the came to merge with “real society.” They had “real” expectations of “real life.”
On TV and films life is “idealized stereotyped, and molded to a a lowest common denominator to effect a common vicarious experience for the largest number of viewers.
As children grow up interacting with the modern media creates a socializing experience based on exposure to and interaction with a fictional reality. And then maybe we try to bring that fictional reality into our lives to make it real. Quite by accident, the vicarious experience of pop culture, engineered and marketed to sell products in a mass market has become a driver of a utopian vision rooted in the reality of the lowest human common denominator.
EndPapers
So is everyone here special or just those who worship your god?
A bridge from AlamedaCreek to EndPapers, A house lot adjacent to the boundary of the regional park of Alameda Creek at the Beard Rd Staging area has been bought, there is a blueprint and construction has begun into the building of the house.
Lunch time.at the site
We don’t let those kind of questions come into our house. Making photographs enables me to keep these kind of questions away from my life.
Photography can be for fun, I try not to get too serous about it. Waiting on the fourth floor of the doctor’s office, looking out the window on a rainy day—its more than a year ago that “we” discovered that I had serious hip arthritis and entered this crazy world of having to select professionals, and finding myself in a race to get correct information before my body stopped functioning—and I fantasize about life outside the window.
Even simple things can take your mind off now, Its confusing to feel so young and look so old, rather to feel old and look so young. But don”t miss an opportunity to look at yourself as the camera sees you.
I wondered that one day in Waltham, Massachusetts, parked in my van in front of a large store window. On the passenger side looking at the large reflecting glass and seeing the reflection of a gentleman in the light jacket with cane across the street waiting for the light. I was thinking about our difference in age then and now I am his age, and I am still thinking and he is not.
In my self images I can try on any kind of hat I want, including one made of reflecting light and I don”t have to clean up afterwards or even worry about leaving it some where.
Photos phore phun are better than phame phore .phailure, pheeling phound phore phree . If you do not understand , you have tried too hard.
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha
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