A 4getme knot

To no who you are 

My mother had a stroke, lost her memory, and lived in a memory care residential facility .One year I made some images of the residents and the facility sent printed them as holiday cards to send to the family of the respective residents..

I6s hard to know what each person is thinking. Do they really know what is happening? Is “posing for a photograph” something we just naturally do without thinking about it?

Or when they walk away have they forgotten that they posed for a photograph?

These are people who everyday need a caregiver to wipe their butt after pooping.

Even back 12 years ago, investment firms were buying up these memory care residential facilities converting full time care givers to part time, hourly pay minus benefits. and declaring an increase in profits, which generally lead to year end bonuses for upper level management. .Full time care givers, no matter how good a job they did taking care of a resident,  the end was the resident dies., and the job was they go on to a next one.

Each of these people has family members that come and visit, more or less. generally they do not know who the visitors are beyond that its the person that regularly shows up, sometimes. The don”t know what time it is,, care givers come to wake them up, dress them, bathe them, take them to the dining room—many can eat by themselves— there is little choice in their lives. . At one time each had a story to tell, each may still have a story to tell, but they cannot remember it.

Alameda Creek

J.Z. Young in Doubt and Connectivity in Science , explains how electricity is not something that is conveyed by or contained in anything, but is something that occurs when two or more bodies inare special positions. Our language derived from phonetic technology cannot cope with this new view of knowledge. We still talk of electric current “flowing” or we speak of the “discharge” of electric energy like the lineal firing of guns. But quite as much as with the esthetic image of painterly power, “electricity is the condition we observe when there are certain spatial relations between things.”

Marshall McLuhn  Understanding Media The Extensions of Man

Alameda Creek is a place I can create to nevision a world which is some kind of artistic harmony.

Its not real, nor write or wrong, I have no expectations of it other than fun.

It not like looikng at a stock chart and finding areas of support and resistance ,

Or waiting for a red light to change to green

Its more like wondering will I do something, that moves someone to smile at me today.

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In mid 1960s I was a photographer for the Model Cities project in Toledo Ohio.documenting the various groups and individuals associated with the program. One late afternoon I was in the main office and this couole came in. They had been driving north from Appalachia, hoping to find work. The had no money, and almost no gas in the car, with a backseat filled with McDonalds wrappers and they said they had not eaten or bathed in days. I was in the office , ready to go home, they sat down, began an interview, and I took the photo while I was listening to the interview. I do not know where the negative is, this is a scan of a print, and I I never saw them again, A couple who got in a car, together, no destinantion , no plan, I guess they had faith in each other and they would find a solution together.

My New Year”s card this year, mostly images from along Alameda Creek

Knowthing knew

How noble
The one who is not enlightened
At a flash of lightening.

Haiku by Basho, translated by Robert Aitken from A ZEN WAVE Basho’s Haiku and Zen

The Pilot Boat,.Boston Harbor, 1971 Tri-x film, more forgiving than my mother . I used to develop in a can using Diafine, I warmed the developer a little, and used constant soft agitation which reduced the contrast levels and developed a soft reticulation

Alameda Creek

The beginning of culture!
Rice-planting songs
In the innermost part of the country.

Haiku by Basho, translated by Robert Aitken fromA ZEN WAVE Basho’s Haiku and Zen

Why do people do the things they/we do? Why do they behave the way we do? Think of human society as like the universe,  the planets and stars are inconstant motion but not moving randomly. The mysterious force we call Gravity keeps the stars and planets in order. We call it a “gravitational field.’ and where there is matter the pieces of matter interact with each other to create a structure of behavior for the Universe while the matter is moving around.

Human society and what we call the process of culture is very similar. Where ever there is a group of people a field is generated and a structure of human behavior emerges from the behavior of the individual of the group. Behaviors which are successful become repeated, you might use the term “norms” to describe those successful repeated behavior patterns; Contrary to how popular media uses the word “norms” most people would be not be conscious of a norm because we would just assume its the natural way for people to behave.

Whenever and however, human beings started , the base behavior or original behavior would be that behavior which was successful in enabling survival and when the behavior was repeated it became a part of the structure of behavior, it enabled long term survival and a “ structure of behavior” emerged.

Early humans interacted with each other, who knows exactly how or when , but humans used sound to communicate and created words and language. All this interaction, for homo sapiens was person to person. for maybe 300,000 years. .

Probably signs were created, marks in the dirt, rocks in a pile, scratches on cave walls or on shells and media was created— media the tool humans created to communicate with each other when there was no face to face contact.

The graphic arts are those art techniques which enabled the production of multiple copies of the same image. Where human history , and the generation of culture, was restricted to face -to face communication, humans making marks on a medium for communication, graphic arts, such as printing, which enabled the same visual to be experienced by many people around the world. reading books and newspapers. Now digital expressions, using light and electricity, enabled the same visual to be shared instantly all around the word,  has expanded and speeded up the transmission of culture and the homogenization of the human experience. Everywhere people see the same world instantly on their phones, Electronical media is driving driving the world to become one culture at an increasingly rapid rate.

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A day when Fuji
Is obscurred by misty rain!
That’s interesting.

Haiku by Basho, translated by Robert Aitken from A ZEN WAVE Basho’s Haiku and Zen

Entrance to a restaurant in Tokyo

Ki-seto tokkuri and Kuro-oribe guinomi from Mino-Seto area of Japan.Kiseto(yellow seto) was the first of the Japanese folk potteries to hold liquid. Potters were trying to create celadon (chinese pottery) and this came out. Holding liquid is a most important capability of functional pottery for human development. Oribe is the most adventurous of the Japanese folk style pottery, this one is kuro-oribe or black oribe but no matter how “creative” the oribe piece you will always feel its“ oribe.” One thing about Japanese folk pottery such as oribe  is that no matter how “creative or individualistic the potter makes it, you can always feel its oribe, tradition is alway embedded in the pot. This is different than western pottery  where the individual always wants to express their individuality at the expense of tradition.

I posted an image of the kuro-oribe on the internet about 15 years ago, someone copied it and reposted it as a chawan (tea bowl for matcha) .Now I sometimes see it mis-represented  on Pinterest and some web sites about Japanese tea bowls. The ki-seto was made by Kagami Shugei, and the glaze is very beautiful.

What makes Kagami’s Ki-Seto so special is his relentless research and understanding of the ancient glazes. For close to forty years he has been in search of the roots of Ki-Seto ash glaze and believes it dates back to the Kamakura period with Ko-Seto (old Seto). Kagami speculates that the potters then used a chestnut-bark ash glaze called kurikawa-bai. Of course there are no records of this and kurikawa-bai is mentioned only around the Meiji period. He gets his kurikawa-bai from local builders who use chestnut in finer homes. No doubt it’s never enough and who knows how much longer he’ll be able to make his highly prized kurikawa-bai. As we now know it’s everything.
Robert Yellin

Father and son poster m the son made the guinomi.

Gate gate para gate parasagate, bohdhi svaha

Today seams twogether

Between old age, arthritis, dental problems, appointments and just generally getting old. the week went by before I knew it. I made this many years ago The Storyof Philosophy by Bryan Magee.

InJapan “craft” is considered Art.where as in the United States craft is not quite Art.,n=unless it “nonfunctional.” Pottery played a basic major role in the survival of human beings, When I go to museum I cannot touch the painting but when I drink my tea or eat my rice the piece of Art is in my hands.and in my own house every day it brings me meaning , This is a ind of Nezumi Oribe , the lip is a different clay than the bottom.

Alameda Creek

Photographs have their own technical qualities , I just like some simple visual feeling without being bothered about what is the “truth in the image.”

The colors , the textures and the forms are just for visual fun.

You are free to make your own meaning but you don”t have to make it so complicated as to find out what it is,

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In 2008 Mom had a strok,e lost her memory and developed expressive aphasia. I took care of her for 3 1/2 years. Sometimes she was in the hospital or rehab. I came from her body, she raised me, I was a hack-off for the first 21 years of my life, I got kicked out of school a few times and , overall made life unpleasant for her or maybe it was vice versa. I did return to graphic design art school at age 30, them worked at a large printer for a year and moved to Silicon Valley, and established a marcom design business for 35 years.. She was supportive throughout

Perhaps she did not know I was her son , maybe just someone who appeared every day, usually she was glad to see me, sometimes not. I am glad I did but I do not want my wife or son to do it.

Avalokiteshvara; Guanyin in China, Kannon in Japan, the Bodhisattva of Compassion for all Buddhas, who hears the sounds of all the suffering in the world. I am not a person of faith, I never really had the question of whether there is a god or not, I figured if there was I would know it, why would god hide from me. Buddhism has its own historical baggage , there were Buddhas before Gautama Buddha, there are more Buddhas to come. and we are all supposed to be able to awaken theBuddha in side of us—Technically we should all be able to become Buddhas one day.

Avalokiteshvara said Heart Sutra to Shariputra and I wonder what does that have to with 2 million years of Home erectus, and 300,00 years of Homo sapiens when history of human inter relationships seems to be a time of constant war, killing, inhumanity of all sorts, and we are still stumbling along. surviving. At least someone, Avalokiteshvar, is hearing the sounds of human suffering.

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha

2B, Alone 101

For fifteen long years, 
Times without number 
I have come 
To see the red almond-blossoms 
Open in the spring. 
Now I am growing old— 
I am all of seventy-three, 
And it is hard for my old legs 
To come thus far. 
I fear that this time 
ls the last, 
And I have come 
To bid the red blossoms of the almond 
A long farewell

Po-Chu-i 白居易; 772–846

http://bs.dayabook.com/poetry/po-chu-i-selected-poems/being-visited-by-a-friend-during-illness

My mother had a stroke, suffering severe memory loss and developing expressive aphasia. For 3 1/2 yeas I never understood if she knew I was her son or some guy who kept showing up everyday. After lunch we would take a walk, and later when that became no longer possible we would return to her room to talk until she fell asleep. I wondered if she remembered she had been talking with me when she woke up later, or maybe the memory just wasn’t there at all.

I was in the last years of my business, had moved my office home, and could organize my own time. We decided to place mom in a memory care residence—she had long term care insurance —where the difficult day over day care would be done by professionals and we could make time spent with her something special, such as going out for lunch, going to stores or a park , anyplace which might be of interest. I know not all people have that advantage, its what my father wanted for his woman.

I thought it was a good idea because it is emotionally and logistically challenging to spend everyday taking care of someone’s personal needs at a quality standard of care and we could focus on doing things outside that brought her pleasure.

She was recovering in rehab for eight weeks. Lunch was served in a dining room. There were two dining rooms, one for patients who could take of themselves and the other for people with other situations. One day I came to find mom sitting at the table all by herself.

I thought “What does a person with severe memory loss and expressive aphasia think about when they are sitting themself in front of their lunch.? ” Do they think about who they are? What their life has been? About going shopping after lunch? Most of the time during that 3 1/2 years I never knew what she was thinking.

Before her stroke she had sorted and condensed her photo album books. I brought them over to her room and would go through them with her, Here she is pointing to herself, I thought something was working .For about 20 plus years for the New Year I would make shirts for the family with an abstract graphic of the numbers of the year,

Alameda Creek

Photographs are embedded in light, get a lens and a medium in front of reflected light and you can make a copy of the image from the light

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This is what the Weber Telescope does,. it does not go some where to make a photographic image, it sits in space and and catches the light as it goes by to make a photographic record. Some of that light is billions of light years away and it still carries an image in it.

Previously I wondered which was faster, the speed of light or the rate of expansion of the Universe. After a little research it seems that many believe that at the beginning of the Big Bang the Universe expanded faster than light but it can be confusing, If light and the Universe expanded at the same speed ,WHAT??

What happens to light when it gets to the end of theUniverse? Could the absence of light be the end of the Universe? As the light travels it loses its strength, weakens and gets dimmer and sometimes would become no light , would that be the end of the Universe

I thought I had a “new” question, I thought it was “–cute” to thinK if the speed lf light was faster than the speed of the expansion of the Universe then at some point light would reach the end of the universe— ha ha ha and then what”

So I googled it and found it was serious question.

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Science has discussion on it , one idea was in the beginning of the Big Bang the expansion was faster than the speed of light.but now its slower

My concern is the the photograph, the image, which is embedded in the light..f it does not get reflected off some matter does it go to the end of the Universe? Is the “End of the Universe” just no light? and we cannot see the image anyway?

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A monk asked Nansen, “Is there a truth which no one has taught?
Nansen replied, “There is.”
“What is this truth,” said the monk, “which no one has so far taught?”
Nansen answered, “It is not mnd; it is not Buddha; it is not things.”

Mumonkan CaseXXVII Blyth translation

A piece of the letter “S” from the word “STOP” painted on the street at an intersectjon.

Government employees paint the street, at the beginning they look the same , then time passes, Nature and people create Art.

Wereds knever kneaded

My photographs try to appreciate the general visual aspects over the tendency (when experiencing a photograph) to search more specific information. A husband accompanies his wife to the medical appointment, she knits as he falls asleep. .

People in unappreciated moments of being themselves.

or moments of being appreciated by someone else.

Alameda Creek

Listening to a podcast last night on AI the interviewee was explaining that in teaching a machine the idea of a cup they present many different images of a cup until the machine has experienced so many of these images that whenever it sees a cup it can search its memory and find one that fits , i.e. finds a word “cup” that defines the experience.The implication is that there are a finite number of these thing and one day when the AI machine has experienced all these things it will know everything..

The interviewee went on to compare this process to “human“thinking’, i.e.that when humans have a visual experience the image enters through the eye and the mind searches through its memories until it finds a word to define the “thing.”

I have previously suggested that seeing a photograph is similar —the person sees a photograph, then the mind unconsciously recognizing it is a photograph, accepts as a “real record” of some thing(s), begins to differentiate one thing from another, seeks a relationship between the things until it has a word which summarizes the visual experience. Example, the photograph shows sky, clouds, mountains a river, the mind gives up the word “landscape” and the viewer now “understands the photograph” because they have a word for it, the purpose of visual experience has been realized and is no longer necessary.

In my photographs I try to get away from the kind of visual experience with the end purpose to find a word, a literal meaning, which defines the visual experience. The experience of the visual qualities of the photograph are enough, and allowing the mind to convert it to a literal meaning is not needed.

Humans beings have language, which includes the ability to have a general and sub level particulars , i.e. Horse: bay, pinto, draft horse, thoroughbred, mustang etc, and when it experiences a “new thing” the human can fit a particular into the category all by itself. . An AI machine will likely never be human and there is no reason to expect to be.

. A photograph can just be the visual experience, of the photographic techniques with out needing a word to get in the way of understanding it.

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Hagi

Hagi is a style of Japanese folk pottery,. In Japan “Folk pottery” is differentiated from Kyoto style pottery by a few qualities. Kyo-stye was made for the Kyoto Royalty, usually from local kilns , made from porcelain and was water tight before “folk pottery.” It is often complex artistically decorated and even inexpensive pottery fololws this lead Ogata Kenzan and Nonomura Ninsei were famous examples of potters in this style,

Folk pottery, such as Hagi, and Shino, Oribe, Ki-seto, Seto-guro,Karatsu, Bizen, Mashiko and many other lesser known ware from kilns scattered around the countryside throughout Japan. Development of the the ability to hold liquid came later, the styles are more freer and less dependent on the beauty of the decoration. and more on the artistic qualities of the clay, glaze and decoration techniques.

Hagi is desirable for tea ceremony. It is well known for being slightly porous, and over the years it changes color .It is said that Hagi changes the tone of color “7 times”, and this quality is highly appreciated by users. This bowl was potted by Rinchinan XI about 100 years ago. A gohan chawan is made in a simple Korean rice bowl style, the rice bowl being the minimal essential basic pot for human life.

The signed wood tomobako usually includes the potter’s identity and the name of the kiln on top ,inside the top, or on th side.Yamato Int his case Harunobu Shoroku, aka Rinchinan, XI, born 1884-?. In this case you can tell the wrapping cord is very old. This is what I saw on when I bought them .

I think its a father and son The signed wood tomobako is in the lower right small image.