Noin’ my name

“Are blossoms to be viewed only in their fullness,
The moon only when its round and bright?

Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) Yoshido Kenko brush drawing by Janney

A photograph of things— wall, face drawings, faces, , bicycle, boy, man — its enough things to put it together—“father teaching son to ride a bicycle..”

Sometimes its hared to know what a photograph is about, we can clearly see the things but it we cannot classify the relationship between the things ,

Sitting in a coffee shop in Dublin, felt like John Cheever grown’ old.

When you know its a photograph , that limits the search process to seeking to define “things” until enough things generate a relationship where the meaning of the word summarizes the visual experience. of the photograph into a meaning. that announces its ok for you to stop looking .

I don’t want to go there, I don’t want to take you there..

Alameda Creek

The noun, impunity, comes from the Latin roots im- (“not”) plus poena (“punishment”), a root which has also produced the word pain. Impunity is the freedom from punishment or pain. If someone has committed a punishable offense but does not have to fear punishment, he or she does it “with impunity.”

Yesterday the Eurasiagroup issued The Atlas of Impunity report, a joint effort by David Miliband and his staff and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, with analytical support from Eurasia Group’s Geostrategy team. Following are some conclusions of the report . . .

”The legacy of colonialism and the slave trade is correlated with higher impunity scores.”

“Environmental degradation is where impunity continues to thrive,”

 
“Violence against women and gender-based discrimination is a global problem“.”

“Human rights are being abused and accountability is falling within democracies.”

“One poor fellow, exhausted with haemorrhage, had his leg amputated as a last hope and dies ten minutes after the surgeon has left him. Almost before the breath has left his body it is sewn up in its blanket and carried away and buried the same day —we have no room for corpses in the ward.”

Florence Nightengale on conditions at Scutari Hospital outside Constantinople after the battle of Inkerman, November 5, 1854 in a letter to Queen Victoria. from The EYE OF WAR Words and Photographs from the Front Line John Keegan and Phillip Knightley

“I cannot say what kind form of trial the prisoners underwent, or what evidence was recorded against them. I merely know that they were marched up in batches, and shortly after marched back again to a large tree, which stood in the centre of the square ,and hanged thereon. This went on from about three o’clock in the afternoon till daylight the following morning, when it was reported that there was no more room on the tree . . . There were one hundred and thirty men hanging from the branches .”

Corporal William Forbes-Mitchell of the 93rd (Sutherland)  Highlanders on/British retribution during the Indian Mutiny. The EYE OF WAR Words and Photographs from the Front Line John Keegan and Phillip Knightley

At the bottom of the trenches there lay frozen green Germans and frozen grey Russians and frozen fragments of human shapes, and there were helmets, Russian andGerman, lying among the thick debris . . .But now everything was silent in the fossilized shell, as though a raving lunatic had suddenly died of heart failure.

Russian journalist Alexander Werth remembers Stalingrad immediately after the the Germans surrender there, January 31, 1943 from The EYE OF WAR Words and Photographs from the Front Line John Keegan and Phillip Knightley

And most of us wash our dirty laundry, hang it out to dry and wear it the next day. Perhaps we could say that in spite of the odds, in spite of the inhumane things through history people did to each other to survive, we also developed a sense of humanity and the desire to survive in a more humane world .

“Only thank God men have done learned how to forget quick what they ain’t brave enough to try to cure.”
The Hamlet William Faulkner

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1ne thing about a photograph is that its “real”—How did these small particles, call them monads or atoms, molecules, electrons, the concept of a basic physical thing from which everything is made— get together in this place at this moment? The Universe is in constant change right before our eyes, but the photograph as a visual record of that change, something which once was but is no longer/

My mother had a stroke, suffered severe memory loss and expressive aphasia. During 3 1/2 years She lived in two different memory care facilities and an eight week stay in a nursing -rehab facility.

I used to see her almost every day and I took a small point & shoot camera with me and took photographs . originally for a legal record of my role in her care and also , she was my mother, that was reason enoguh.

Often she did not know who I was.a person, some person who showed up everyday but she had a feeling, -a memory-impression of who I was.” and it was both comforting and confusing. for her.

Good care givers know the importance of helping memory care residents keep up daily personal care. The residents may not express it or even show it, but they feel better when their hair is brushed, wearing clean clothes or clean body hygiene —simple things that give them their dignity even if they have lost touch with their memories.

Happy moments make it all worthwhile..

One of the things I like about Buddhism is Avolokitashvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, he (or she in the case of Guanyin or Kannon) who hears the suffering of the world and is the compassion for all Buddhas.

Om mani padme hu

Que duo? Company

Often I see photographs in the news media and images from movies, television and other forms of streaming visual information showing “people in the news,”.

Of course that is what they are, by definition,.

I like more simple moments,

A moment not intempted to be special . . .

No script, no director, no rehearsals, no make-up crew . .
siblings selling lemonade on lower Magazine Street about 1970.

when I see it —two people together on their road,—its “no simple highway.…”

And its for “your steps alone.”

lyrics (in quotes} from Ripple, Grateful Dead

Alameda Creek

The meaning of Shaka Buddha is an end to human suffering.

When Guatama Buddha was born to a family of wealth and military power., a sage told his father that he would be a leader who united India or a religious leader . His father rejected the latter, and for 29 years Siddartha lived in a (over) protective environment ..

One day being driven around the outside in his horse drawn carriage he encountered the four signs and learned human suffering, old age;, .sickness, and death, and last, a wandering religious beggar dressed in simple yellow clothes, was peaceful and calm with an inward joy. It is said that the horse who was reborn as a god.

Guatama left home to seek an end to human suffering.

So for some time I have wondered what is this human suffering that Shaka Buddha sought to end.?

I thought about the human expressions of human suffering I have experienced, whether myself or expressed to me by others .

Common, perhaps call it natural, condition of human suffering is one thing—everyone is suffering from the same thing—but many individual expressions, including my own, were often differing personal instances of feelings of unhappiness.

Dying of sickness or old age, these are not feelings, but “real,”

What is the human suffering Buddha worked so hard to end—is it just the cycle of life? Would not the end of the cycle of life and death simply be no more life? The end of the reincarnation cycle ?

But maybe Shaka Buddha meant just what he said.

At that time in India belief in reincarnation was popular . Reincarnation means a cycle of non ending birth&death and birth& death and birth& death. How to end the cycle of human suffering. I don’t know if Buddha was also referring to the more common personal expressions of human emotional suffering, maybe, maybe knot.

In spite of the really lonely times of suffering I .have had .in my life, I would do it again just for those few feeling good times . . .

“I’d give all my tomorrows for a single yesterday
Holding Bobby’s body next to mine”

Lyrics from Me and Bobby McGee Kris Kristofferson

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The beginning of the Lunar New Year, Year of the Tiger, marked by a Welcome Painting . . .

Painting by Janney

and oranges and incense at the temple.

Walking up Telegraph Hill from Columbus Ave.

Afternoon shadows in San Francisco

Afternoon sun from Telegraph Hill, I guess that would be Russian Hill in the background. .

Looking west from somewhere along Polk Street ..

Gate Gate paragate ,parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha

When one wins won

Chinese Lunar New Year

The Tiger is the third of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Tiger is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 寅.The Tiger is known as the king of all beasts in China. The zodiac sign Tiger is a symbol of strength, exorcising evils, and braveness. Many Chinese kids wear hats or shoes with a tiger image for good luck.

A little bird thinks I would like to become a member of this family 😊 The calligraphy “家” is a family in a house .The Tiger of the year will bring you safety, health, happiness and luck in all your endeavors..
Drawing by Janney

Alameda Creek

People’s eyes sense light, and the camera will make an image using light, and if adjusted “correctly,” the image will look like “thing” at people see, “things” for which we have a name.

The camera can also make other versions— an alternative reality—of the image — such as out of focus, or over/ under exposure,

Are such images any less “real?”

They may be less “real” to people, certainly when the wedding photographer delivers “out of focus” images we would reject them.

But in or out of focus they are all real photographs just t to us,the images are “not “real,” —Its not what we paid for.”

And if we refused to pay the photographer and went to court, we would win, The court would agree they are not “real” photographs,.

Marshall McLuhan told the (circa 1950’s) story of two women meeting on the street, one with a baby and carriage. “ What a beautiful child” to which the mother replies, “Oh, you should see her photos.!” This man is probably looking at photos . . .

Photographs are not just a technical process, but they are also “required” to have a “real content” aspect about them

Wedding photographs, catalog and product advertisements, year book photographs, etc,— one part of the standard is does the image look like what people see with their eyes.

And a photograph has an artistic component.

That artistic component is a part of the essence of the photograph.

A photograph has a certain feeling, a feeling, not easy, or maybe impossible, to describe with words—a feeling beyond words that only belongs to the photographic image , like the special transmission from Shaka Buddha to Kasyapa.

For many years in western painting, oil paintings were visual records of moments, like a photograph is now.

And when photography reared its head in our society, oil painting expanded to include abstract painting, even though arts had for hundreds of years already embraced the abstract qualities of painting, at the least as part of teaching apprentices things like design and color..

For some Art is whatever you can get away with, for others its not about the Art or the artist, but the customer client or for me, it you hang it on the wall and most days find something inspiring, well, then its Art..

The photograph, whether still or moving, has enabled people all over the word to speak out, to be heard, in ways which go beyond the language of words. The personal phone, which is also a computer, is a tool to express and to experience the expressions of others, for people, regardless of power or wealth, all over the world.

This was the vision of Steve Jobs, and because he cared not just about the quantity, but also the quality of that expression and experience.He set the standard of quality for the computer-phone which has given a more meaningful voice to peoples all over the world.

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Albuquerque

The west side of Albuquerque is flat desert, you can see Mt Taylor about fifty miles away and the setting sun can strongly shine across the desert .searching for something to reflect off in the late Fall afternoon.

Kokopelli, the flute playing mischievous free spirit and bringer of good luck, rain and fertility.

Tile, interesting use of non complimentary color, maybe the yellow and the blue combine (in the eye) to make a green and the yellow and red to make an orange? though the mind would fight to never allow such a thing.

Metal people designed in the style used in Navajo blanket weavings.

Kokopelli is a popular image , a window covering maybe in a bathroom somehwere.

In our house we combine Kokopelli, Acoma and a Japanese wooden box.

Albuquerque, like any city, has its own feeling, at lunch time its often hot outside, and hopefully cool inside, somewhere along a back alley parallel to Central Ave. SE.

One early morning about 30 years ago. before breakfast is served at the mission, people wait in line, or they may just walk around—maybe it relieves the tension of bing poor. WhenI saw this I wondered how my own mother would survive by herself, walking the streets waiting for the doors to breakfast to open. But she was fortunate in her life,

Once Confucius was asked, . “How do you deal effectively with thieves? and replied, “If you, sir, did not covet things that did not belong to you, they wouldn’t steal if you paid them..”

Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi svaha

Eatzenbe

Welcome from New Year’s Tiger

Year of the Tiger, brush drawing by Janney

Welcome to Dim Sum in Fremont California. Fremont, the fourth most populated city in the Bay area and was established in 1956 when the small local towns of Centerville, Irvington, Mission San Jose, Niles, and Warm Springs joined to become one city.

During the 1960s computer related engineers from Asia, especially from China and India, increasingly came to Silicon Valley for computer related jobs, jobs which also pay well.

When I moved here around 1980, house prices in the area from Palo Alto through Sunnyvale area were increasing and Fremont was not referred to as a part of “Silicon Valley.” Although many computer related businesses had locations in San Jose, along 101 and 237 there was an arrogant hesitancy to even call San Jose a part of Silicon Valley in spite of above 101 was an ever growing assortment of computer related business

Marinated tofu; tofu is one of my favorites foods, we have it probably 3-4 times a week.

Plate of three Old Fashioned Egg Custard

At this time Fremont had a safe town with plenty of business space and residential housing before going through the canyon to the other side of the mountains. .Many people from Asia have established in Fremont. I got my first office, $35/month, in Fremont, and a few years later moved my residence there. Plenty of Chinese and Indian restaurants.

Black Steamed Bun with Egg Yolk, soft and sweet,

Small matters

Before Christmas, I saw this elderly woman carrying her bedroom while moving the wheel chair with her feet. She was moving so slow, perhaps with know where too go, Imagine what it would be like, leaving a shelter in the morning to return at night, having to carry your belongings with you. And from a wheelchair on the street, I wonder “Just where and how do you use the bathroom.”

With modern society came many benefits, and wealth, an excess of wealth, people with billions while others are suffering . Most of us would like to solve that problem, we don’t know how or maybe we no how.

A burrito, a tube of chips and a newspaper for breakfast, al fresco.dining.

“Where could I go but to the Lord.
”Seeking the refuge for my soul
Needing a friend to save me in the end
Won’t you tell me
Where could I go but to the Lord”

Where could I go but to the Lord. J,B Coats (1901-1961)

It is an old Martin-D28, between the stubs of fingers on his right hand he is holding a flat pick, its an open tuning and singing mostly southern gospel songs.

They had just arrived from Appalachia, an old gas guzzling car with a backseat piled with f clothes among old fast food wrappers. Toledo, circa 1969

Powell Street Station woman delivering a lecture to the tourists standing in line to ride the cable car up Powell Street.

Maybe he was a fisherman in his younger days, or perhaps someone”s ne’er do well brother., he has a job
Boston, circa 1970

Alameda Creek

I walk along Alameda Creek almost every day, Some times I listen to podcasts, other times I meet someone and walk&talk with her or him or I just use my five senses to keep my mind form wandering.

When the water comes from here it means the dams are open upstream. Sometimes young people come here as a group or by themselves .

Fremont lies in the shadows of Mission Peak

There is a notion that what you sense—see, hear, touch, smell and taste—are Real, and we differentiate and define them as “Real Things.”

And then the Universe is a bunch of things with space between the things enclosed in an undefined (but expanding) area. The purpose of Science is to differentiate each thing and give it a name and one day we will know everything in the Universe.

Yet as we examine the “space” between things, we find “smaller things” with space between them, which as time goes on, repeats itself. Oh the Absolute Absurdity of It All——The Myth of Sysphus ( book by A. Camus).

Stephen Hawking remarked (my paraphrase): At one time Philosophy was ahead of Science, but now Science was ahead of philosophy and will be until Science has discovered everything in the universe.” —which he he suggested was coming soon.

It seems that while Science is an excellent human tool for knowing, we are the universe looking at itself and its a a classic subject-object situation. For the Universe . people looking at the Universe is like me looking at my foot, or how about me looking at my mind?

And does this search by the Universe have a purpose ?

Look around you, most other living things are busy meeting basic needs. People on the other hand are busy doing all kinds of things including many choose and enjoy the work they do.

Suppose that the Universe had developed a sickness and evolved human beings to cure itself. —But would not the sickness be a part of the Universe? or Maybe we are not the doctor but the sickness?

Imagine culture as a snowball rolling down an infinite decline, forever increasing its size as it gathers more snow as it rolls, maybe discarding some here or there and mixing some different snows together,

Through history people pop up here and there on the always-increasing-in- size snowball, and their experience is limited to what they can muddle around and see, hear, smell, taste or touch .

Each individual has a different place in the snowball, each has their own unique experiences in real and historical time., though there are enough “near-the-same” experiences to enable normalized working social relationships—human survival as a society.

Appreciate how having a written language means a qualitatively different society—Its a game-changer, a paradigm shift. Communication with people you will never meet from time periods you will never experience,

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Usually I like to “just have fun” with the camera.

I usually carry a small point&shoot —I still use a flip phone. Walking along an upper floor of an open parking building it was fun to see myself in the windshield of the car below.

A “thing” is differentiated from other things by identifying its unique set of qualities—different from other things, One “thing” that helped build our vocabulary for many years was that “air” was accepted as“no thing. Air as a no-thing helped to differentiate one thing from another—sky from mountains, dog from ground, can eat from can’t eat— and then Science established that air itself was made up of “things” —78% nitrogen and 21 % oxygen.

But the process of scientific investigation often seems to result in an ever ending finding flow of smaller and smaller particles, aka things.

Stores can be very confusing if you cannot read. and history can be very confusing if you can read. People spend a lot of time consuming things in both personal, businesses and civic life. During that process they read a lot of information and make buying decisions based on that information.

But as important as differentiating one thing from another, its abstract qualities are interesting We can speak the word “couch,” go into a furniture store and see tens of “couches” none of which look the same, but it does not matter, we understand the concept of couch and can apply it in (most) different situations, doesn’t matter how unusual, strange or new the couch looks— the Particular is never the General, except perhaps in popular media.

Actors in popular media are often selected for their visual appearance qualities. Add camera angle, lighting, technical fixes and of course, writing, rehearsing and acting, all things can be used to enhance the “real photographic” impression experienced by mass audiences—a dialectic of The Ideal and The Real. Actors are people, and the video moving image deliver amore comprehensible Ideal -real experience, there is no room to question what see, and it becomes a vicarious experience. But reading a character development in a book your imagination plays a far more important role in the your mental image of the character. because your mind fills in all the missing visual stuff delivered by the video.

Bizen tokkuri on a lacquered tray with pueblo weaving

This “physical idea ” is not just “attractive” people, but whenever a physical appearance (is believed to) matches the visual character of the role, most characters of which, by definition are “common ” to a mass audience, are a stereo-type. We often use stereo-types in our daily lives. And yet a common critique of people in general is that too often we use stereotypes in judging others.

Ki-Seto tokkuri and Kuro-Oribe guinjomi : Kuro-Oribe, and Oribe in general, is is differentiated from other Japanese folk pottery by its long tradition of creative expression. The guinomi appears to over power the tokkuri—“You’re too small to get me drunk!’’

When we see and If there is no “quick fit” of the original visual image to some category in the database of our mind, question develops. Depending on the situation—life threatening or minor intrusion — the outcome may be more or less important. The “concept of a thing” is more important than any “real thing.” which by the way changes, decays, entropies—empirically observable by the presence of conservatives. in socities.

Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha

Sounds know words can no

Red, Yellow, Butterfly, Flower,
Last effort of Summer to Autumn
A memory to linger for a year.

Brush painting by Janney

For me, its difficult to see this image too close, it feels like these lyrics from an Eric Anderson song:

Yes, I would only like to show you
That is all and nothing more
But I will go unbounded
Looking outside of your door.

I Shall Go Unbounded Eric Anderson

I was involved in my mom’s care for a few years, sometimes i wold visit her and while she did not know who I was, she was real glad to see me, I wondered if it was because I showed up everyday. During the period of this image sometimes I would arrive and stand in front of her and she did not acknowledge me. Often I had a small click-and-shoot camera in my hand which minimized the intrusiveness of the camera as well as always enabled me to have one hand free.

Early morning tobacco-drying barns in Amherst Mass.

Alameda Creek

We understand empirical information comes to each individual person using their five biological senses.While not every human being has five senses.perhaps for some related to genetic conditions and others from outside events later in life . . .

But all people don’t just hear or not hear—or see, touch, taste or smell—the “quality of hearing” is also distributed differently among everyone, each individual has different life experiences, associated with and because of their senses and Each experience is human.

This has an important affect regarding language which probably originated from, and is continually transmitted by, spoken words and human interaction. While individuals encounter ”Sounds&Words” uniquely most of the differences are very minor, you could say ”nano-differences.

In order to survive society (such as we might think of a “culture), i.e. has stability, even though each individual is unique, there has to be enough “close to common experiences” to produce a language, a common shared view of the world. Still there are those who think these human differences are worth killing over.

Words are not real in themselves. House? We all know what is a house, I say “Go to the green house on the left!” and even though that house is a unique house in this Universe, you know what I mean and can find it. We use the concept “house” in the conversation as a tool to see the individual unique house .

Human behavior in a society—which we are by nature—creates a shared common meaning to an individual sound creating common sounds representing general concepts which individuals use to apply to specific situations. The sound (word) is more than just a shared meaning for communication, its a human tool for knowing.

One human quality is the ability to differentiate a “thing” from other“ things.”People differentiate “things” from each other, create a unique sound , i.e. a word for the thing and by using it make it a common shared meaning..How long were people building this foundational human database of can eat this /can’t eat that; safe here not safe there; and so on and so forth. The same wall is different for everyone.

A phonetic alphabet enables people to creatively use letters to create new words and then pronounce a new sound. never before spoken. Over the past 40 years marketing has done this especially in corporate and drug names _though I personally enjoy when Joyce did it in Finnegans Wake.

What ever communication animals have it is not the same quality as human language which not only communicates as animals can do, but creates common meanings among people.

Its fascinating that this quality is a uniqueness of human beings. For other animals sounds are specifically used for communication, For people sounds have common meanings and individuals who share that common meaning may not have had the experience. Animals have common meanings when each of the individuals has the common experience g to be associated with a sound, such as “danger” or “food.” Unlike animals humans can “walk in each other’s shoes”—when we try.

Even though we are all unique, the natural process of be1ing a human being creates a commonness of the uniqueness —if it does not then the “society,” i.e. the individuals, does not survive.
We have survived, we are here ,we all have it, just some use it for their personal benefit at the expense of all.

Senses are how we know. Without sensual input we cannot interact with the Universe, we cannot know the universe. Language is a human created tool to successfully (survive) interact with the universe .

Marshall McLuhan argued that print had resulted in people disproportionately using more sight with less use of other senses, the implication being that print created a society in which people do not use their senses in balance. Specifically McLuhan suggested that the emphasis on “visual sense” ”resulted in only knowing the universe as a bunch of linear causal relationships.

I listened to a report on NPR by an anthropologist working in the Australian outback who was discovered by a group of people who had never encountered a “different people” before .On inquiry how did they discover them? The people answered that, from about a mile away., they could smell them. they know it was other people by the smell and they were curious. (Note: this explanation is over simplifed and over generalized but the important parts are as reported).

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i like zen because of the stories.
Monks were arguing over the possession of a cat. Nan-ch’uan appeared, took hold of the cat and asked, “If any of you can say something to the point he will save the life of this creature; if nobody can, it will be killed.”
No one could so the cat was killed. Later when Chao-chuo returned Nan-ch’uan told him what happened. Chao-chuo took off a sandal .put it on top of his head and went away.
Nan-ch’uan said, “Had you been here a moment ago , you would have saved the animal’s life.”

Original Teachings of Ch’an Buddhism Chang Chung-Yuan

When you first read the story you cannot understand it. When you think about it a while you come to understand it and as time goes by you forget it—the story does its job and then goes away.

That’s why I wonder if I meet a buddha, or a bodhisattva, would I know it? Maybe it makes no difference to the buddha, but the bodhisattva who is delaying their “buddha hood” to help me, or someone like me—maybe someone not like me— become a buddha. Why waste their time?

The fashions in the 1960s, 50 plus years ago, three young fashionably dressed urban men on a small bicycle . . .

Three young men in blue jeans riding down the country road in the back of a pick up, the two on the ends look like brothers, maybe all three are, but I cannot know from this angle, maybe you can.

Sharing something common with myself, I could not do it without the camera as I am too selfie-ish.

After a day walking around Tokyo, just before closing I pickup some discounted sushi in the department basement store, some beer at the Ozeki Asakusa Kaminarimon store and transfer images to the hard drive before going to sleep.

The first time I stayed in a Tokyo Hotel my sister made the reservation. It was a big hotel in Shinjuku and it was the tiniest room I have been in. When I asked the english speaking-clerk he said that if I wanted a cheaper room there were two more smaller sizes for less less money.

from Heart Sutra, Seal style calligraphy by Janney