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Lovely Laurine called me up, wondered if I wanted a change of pace project.  Her company,  Left Coast Catering needed a hanging centerpiece that could hold finger food for a party they were doing.  She came up with the idea of using PVC pipe.
So this weekend was a triple play of projects.  I would glue up a few segments with the wonderful brain altering pvc glue and while it set up would go back to either shooting for a Napa winery or photoshopping for Central Cali winery. The glue glued it all together into a blissful weekend of off gases.

Haven't attached the wires yet to suspend this over the table.

 

Now two days later....
The "cloud" installed and in the early stages of the venue decorating.

Three Dimensional People....through the years

They took so many pics of me and placed them on their social media that I feel I can do the same.

Day ran long on this one, drinking was involved.

Henry....and me.

The end.

The Being Here Process of Being Here.

This is my bathroom cabinet now, used to be my portfolio box I made that held the 8x10 transparencies I would trot around to show art directors.  Nobody does that anymore so I re-purposed it.  Hate to throw something away that I built.

What it does do besides hold crap is something I try to universally do in my life.  And that is pay attention to the moment, to make going through life into one big tea ceremony.  You see, the making of the tea is as important as the tasting of the tea.  It's the process and paying attention to the process.
Being aware.

To open the cabinet you simultaneously push in with your thumb on the portion to the right of the catch and slide the catch to the left.  It's a sliding dovetail of wood sliding against wood.  It's still nice and snug of a fit after 15 years.  So satisfying.
But don't open the door too quickly for if you do the toothbrush will slide off of the two rare earth magnets and fall to the floor.  A thoughtful and meditative swing of the door is perfect.
To access the toothpaste, you pull it straight down, the magnet will leap off the tube of paste at just the right moment and re-attach itself to the strip of metal I screwed up in the upper right hand corner.
It makes a sharp sound as it does. The sound registers in the brain.  Bell-like but shorter.
The toothbrush comes out, paste is applied and with your thumb you push the magnet that held the toothpaste off the bar of steel onto the wood to free it.  Another sound, a different sound, more of a thud, still sharp but duller.
Put the toothpaste into position, start moving the magnet back toward the steel and it jumps from the fingers.
Snap!
Maybe as you brush you try and memorize the decimal equivalents.

Or maybe not.  This is your free time.  And valuable time it is, the mind will go to it's happy place for a moment or two.

Place the brush back, and again close the door with attention.

The whole thing just feels so worthy of doing when it's done this way.


Let's go with one more example.

To Have a Drink.

The key I made to open this cabinet is heavy.  Heavy and highly polished.  Picking it up almost makes your mind stay right there just from the weight.  It means something, that weight.  A gravity almost.

It gets placed in the hole in such a way as the flat portion faces outward.  You can see your face in it, questioning you, seeking reassurance that you do indeed want to open up the cabinet that carries the liquid drugs.

You hold onto the door as a quarter turn of the key to the right releases everything.  The door itself is real heavy.  Shop made 1" ply, heavy gauge copper sheet, thick shop made veneer on the outside.  This lowering of the door is important, slowly the fish and the door go down.  One slip and you're fucked. Screws will be ripped out, hinges will rip out, chaos I tell you, sad sad chaos will happen.

Talk about needing a drink if it does.
But you know this so The Process here is Paramount.

I used cable as a way of holding the door in position.  The weight of the door and cable create an instrument almost if you pluck it.  Deep, basslike.  Ok...like OMmmm.....................OMmm..................


OMm..........


Choosing what you drink,  well, that's a whole big bigger than I want to talk about now thing.

You close the door and the fish will hit the stopper thingie three times in quick succession.
One big one.....a half a beat later, two smaller ones
CLACK....clack, clack.

Turn the key to the left, remove and place it on the coaster.

Drink

ahhhhhh

like tea but better.


So maybe you take that drink, maybe you sit on your couch while you talk with somebody.  And there is nothing more important than to listen right then.
The being here process of being here.

The Weight of the Camera

When Taylor graduated from Berkeley High she wanted a senior page in the yearbook.  This is a page designed by the person with commentary and photos and whatnot of their choosing.  Taylor goes through the family pictures looking for ones of herself growing up.
She gets very angry with me.  "Dad, you're a professional photographer and I don't have photos of me!"
Well, she had every right to be angry but not surprised for I've been chanting my mantra her entire life and she knew it well.

The camera gets in the way of life.

I would much rather be totally involved in something rather than looking at it through a tiny eyepiece.  I would much rather experience her blowing out the candles on her birthday cake and not holding something up to my face.  Can you teach someone to ride a bike with a camera in your hand?
Saying goodbye on the first day of school?

So when Taylor sunk the winning basket in the championship game in eighth grade I was there.  Totally there.  Watched the arc of the ball, the swish, the hollering, the swarming....everything.  Would rather have those real memories than seeing it through prisms and 6 pieces of glass.

In fact I was there for every single game she ever played, all the way through High School. And most of the practices.  Being There.

Just got back from a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico.  Beautiful, stimulating for all the senses place.  Took a camera with me but man, the weight of taking photos was too much for the most part.  I took what I needed but felt like to do more would be less.  So I didn't.  The camera can get in the way of life if you let it.

High in the mountains in the tiny pueblo of Latuvi I sat on a bench and watched the village's girl basketball team practice.  Sat there for an hour.  Listened to rhythmic kerwhap of the ball on the concrete, the coach giving instructions, the chatter of the girls, the roosters, the burros braying.  Watched the sun set, smelled the evening cooking wafting.
And thought...about the oneness of it all.

Last year we traveled through the south of Turkey and a bit in Greece.  Winter time.  On the island of Karpothos, the guy who was woken up by us on a Sunday morning to rent a car from says we're the only tourists on the island.  We find a place in Diafini to stay and go down to the only open taverna for a drink and a bite.  It's a Friday night. The taverna has some unusual for me musical instruments sitting on some tables so I do what I do best and start to ask the owner some questions....and listen.
Turns out he's a somewhat known musician in Greece but decided to move back to Diafini and teach traditional instruments and songs to the young of the village.
Soon, the teenagers of the town start to wander in.  He says we have some special guests tonight and we sit and watch him instruct and they give a performance.  You sit and listen and you watch and you take it in.  You don't photograph it.  You think about the oneness of it all. Be Here.

The same the world over

ps.  Not to say you can't live life when you're photographing it.  I remember once on a beach where there was no separation.  To shoot was to live.
Also not saying I don't shoot as a way of experiencing life.  I do.
But it's different.

A Tear in the Skin

 Funny how you see what you're feeling. Funny that the word tear both means a rip and a salty drop of water out of the eye.

Clever that this person put a washing machine door on his place as a window.

Nice that the original owner of the hotel when they sold it made it part of the deal that the sign doesn't change.

Like that without r you end up with bee.  Bee Hot.

Happy the woman feels the fire below.

Lucky the sky is about to rain.

Love to know that a tear in the skin will heal itself with tears and time.

In This Season of White Christmases,

peace on earth, goodwill to men

some think of the freezing 

time

when the Long Knives stormed the camp.

They hear the screams of babies

and young children

the wails of grandmothers

and the death songs.

with Long Knives camped all

around them

and Hotchkiss guns aimed right at

them,

their hearts heavy with sorrow and

desperation,

their children crying with hunger

and cold,

the People begin to dance.

When it is over,

the cameras of the Long Knives

record

the butchered women and children

frozen stiff and grotesque in the 

bloody snow:

a little boy who had lost 

his moccasin

a woman with a little baby nursing

at her breast

"On the 100th anniversary of Wounded Knee."  By Beverly Slapin.  I tore this out of the newspaper on Dec 29th, 1990.  It's been next to me since then, pinned or taped or with a magnet.  One hundred years on 1990.  It's now Dec 29th, 2015.  125 years.

Genocide is still genocide.

I first heard John Trudell speak in a small community building in Berkeley probably early 80's.  He was the leader of the American Indian Movement from 1973-1979, and first coming onto the scene as the de facto spokesperson for the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969. The US Government squashed that one down.  He died earlier this month so you won't be able to hear him speak in person anymore.  That's a shame because he was such a powerful person when he spoke.  I can still see and hear him from that Berkeley talk.  "There has not been one, not one, not one treaty the US Government signed with the Indians that they did not break.  Not one."

Talk about getting fucked over.

The US Government did offer an apology of sorts in 2010.  It was tacked at the end of a Defense Appropriations bill.   Made sure to say the government wasn't going to offer any monetary reparations.  Nope.  Not going to honor no treaty we signed either. 

I can't wait until we elect a Native American as President.

You can find a pretty balanced account of the massacre at Wounded Knee on the internet.  Soldiers were trying to round up the last of the peoples into a camp, take away their rifles they hunted with and make them stop dancing the Ghost Dance...that dance the Whites feared would spread throughout the different tribes.  One shot was fired within the Sioux camp and then the killing began.  Soldiers didn't care who they killed.  Tracking women with children for miles just to shoot them.  Many of the Sioux were only armed with knives, the soldiers had among other weapons four Hotchkiss guns, a gun that put out a huge "shotgun" blast every 6 seconds. 

The US Government awarded 20 Medals of Honor.  Or Dishonor as the Native Americans call it.

Today, grandchildren of the few

survivors

tell the stories, again and again

for their children and

their children's children.

They remember the blood-soaked 

snow,

in the year of someone's Lord

while others sing of white

Christmases,

peace on earth, good will to men

2016.