You take the good, you take the bad...

Tiana - 123112

... because you have no choice.  

I recently heard on NPR a great show on meditation and mindfulness.  While I do need to include much more of each into my life, I heard a sentence or two that hit home.  In essence the spokesperson said, "In Buddhism, you must acknowledge that both change and tragedy are unavoidable in life.  This is something that was forgotten by many Americans prior to the financial collapse."  This was true for me and 2012 was a great reminder of the changes.

I am going to briefly describe the good, the bad, and the changes I experienced in 2012.  One overall influence was Las Vegas.  You will see my new part-time city as a reoccurring theme through the year.

The good.

I got to meet up with blogger buddy Terrell in Las Vegas a number of times, once as recently as this week.  On top of being deep in the local Las Vegas photography world (he is a local legend with the old timers - I learned of an interesting story of him and park ranger), he is a genuinely nice and true guy.  I hope we get to collaborate in the future.

I got to know my new sister city better by spending the equivalent of a month total time here in 2012.  I initially had a crush or infatuation with it.  It turned into a steamy affair quickly.  I am now in the growing in love with it, while starting to see the warts in the relationship.  Sometimes it is the flaws that are most attractive.  During that time, I got to meet three lovely ladies who modelled for me.  Thanks to Gabbi, Fae, and Jolene for blessing me with your beauty.   You will see a few fresh photos of those beauties below.

Starting in January, I included alternative processes into my art.  These included cyanotypes, van Dykes, digital negative to chemical paper printing, gel transfers, Polaroids, toy cameras, assemblage, collage, and multiple other fun techniques.   I am pushing my art into areas I've never considered before.

Below is a small portion of my "I objectify women..." series, where I used discarded packaging as surfaces to affix my photos of women I have taken over the year.  It was a very personal series for me as I know I am part of the objectification of women.  I am going to take higher quality photos of these pieces and present them here.

IOW - 123112 - Photo by Jackie Pruitt

In October my family gathered to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary with 100 of their friends.

In the last three months I got my work into four shows.  That was great exposure.  On the downside, a woman called asking to buy one and balked at the price.  She needs to learn there is a difference between a fine art print and a photo calendar.  Let us see her get an original Ansel Adams for the price of the cheap copy she could get at a book store.

I went to England and Switzerland for work in May.  While the working situation was good, the trip was pleasant, and not much more.

In February, I worked again with the great Candace Nirvana.  This September and October I worked with Tiana and Rain deGrey.  I hope to work with all of them again in 2013.

I am helping a friend start her blog.  I am also starting a new blog with an old friend.  More news on that in the 2013.

The bad.

My health is slowly deteriorating.  It is starting to get noticeable.  Sadly, the cause is purely self induced.  I need to get in better shape and take care of my self before I pass the point of no return.

My relationships with my family are drying out.  I am starting to realize that there is a reason my friends are close, we chose each other.  As my relationships with my family age, they contain less commonalities or areas for us to be close again.  I don't know which is more sad, the fading relationships or that I am not as bothered as I probably should be by the situation.

A close friend of mine died within a week after visiting us in Las Vegas.  LV had nothing to do with it. That was just a month ago and still feels raw.

The changes and the neutral.  

My wife and separated due to her starting a tenure-track position in Las Vegas.  We see each other a couple of times a month.  I am proud of her getting the position.

It is interesting being quasi-single again.  I have a home in California all to myself.  I find I spend almost all my time in my home-office, bedroom, or kitchen.  The rest of the home stays dark.  This time alone makes the times when we are together both fun and difficult.  It is hard to go from single to instantly together again.  On a positive side, I have more time than ever to work on art.

I want to thank my blog friends - Carla, Terrell, C.D., D.L. Wood, Joe, and many others (sorry if I didn't include you.)  You continue to inspire me to create and write more.

I will be back in 2013.  There is much more art to create, life to live, sex to be had, and just general life stuff.  Happy New Year and Ciao.

Some new stuff.

Candace Nirvana - 123112

Fae DeCay - 123112

Gabbi- 123112

Jolene- 123112

Rain- 123112

A little party music for dancing into the new year.  I really like a quality remake like this.

The "big" of it all

Time (featuring Gabbi)* - 090212

I want to focus on the big picture as a conclusion to my series of posts on time.  It is easy to focus on the now, the world within a few feet of me, and the people I can see around me.  Even though I have a well established sense of object permanence, I still tend to disregard the big world around me that I am not immediately interacting with. 

My mind knows that my wife is at a church a few blocks away.  I know that my parents are probably getting in the car for their trip to their church.  I am sure President Obama and Governor Romney are talking about the election to some other people.  Even though I know all this stuff, I am not really thinking about it. 

Right now I am looking out at grassy area on the UC Berkeley Campus, drinking a tea (trying to soothe a sick stomach) and writing this.  A wall is behind me, a number of men are sitting in a random pattern in tables facing away from me.  My whole world can easily be summed up by what I am seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting at this moment.  This sense of "immediate-me" creeps into all my senses, including one of the senses we don't really count as a sense - the sense of time. 

When I was getting my first undergraduate degree**, I took two influential courses in the same quarter, geology and and astronomy.  It was in both of those classes that my concept of size, space, and time were challenged.  I held a rock that was over two billion years old.  I learned I was made of dust from stars long dead.  One night, my astronomy class used a telescope and I became a speck.    We looked at  a very faint, distant object and my professor mentioned that it was a very old star and that I was looking back in time, probably a few billion years.  He then told us that star probably didn't exist anymore and if it had a solar system, all its planets were burnt up and dust.  After looking back in time, I let my eyes adjust to the dark while standing in the cold mountain air and looked at the Milky Way floating above.  I got a glimpse into how long time really is.  The enormity hit me and I had to sit down and felt tears run down my cheeks due to the magnificent grandeur of it all and how damn insignificant I really am.

Someday you will have to say "goodbye" to the sun.
You will bid farewell to the moon, the sky, the clouds, and the stars.
As all things that live, we dim out to a smoking wick, our quiet goodbyes to those things that were  always with us acknowledge we were the grain and they were the beach.
They may not hear our goodbyes, but their existence in our beings need to be recognized and bid proper adieu. 

After that moment, I felt so insignificant in the great sense of time and space.  In the universe, I am less than a grain of sand and in the dimension of time I am less than a atomic flash.   When compared to the extreme greatness of both, there is no microscope powerful enough or time piece precise enough to measure or observe my existence.  This was (and sometimes still is) a pretty depressing realization, until I learned of another truth - the order of it all.

Our universe is spread across time and space.  It isn't haphazard or random.  Invisible forces keep it in order and can help us theorize on what has happened and predict what will happen.  Stars form from the dust of other dead stars.  From that, solar systems form, life my grow on a few planets, then the star dies out, one way or another and it starts over again.  The same is for humans, we are born, we grow up, some of us procreate, and we die.  All I have to do is live in the time I have, try not to harm others, help where I can, enjoy and experience the awe of it all, and die.  In the grand scheme of things, I really don't have much to do.   The weight of the universe is not on my shoulder and I am a tiny piece of lint on its broad shoulders.

* Please click on this to see the big picture.

** I am not bragging about my number of undergrad degrees.  I pissed away my first (psychology) by not getting good enough grades by being lazy.  This laziness cost me the chance to get into grad school and finding a job.  I went back for a second degree and did much better because of the hard lessons learned from my first one.

A diferent time piece

Gabbi (Noon o'clock) - 082212

I saw the first red leaf of fall today, and I was also thinking about change - it's cyclic and reflects nature.

A few days ago Carla mentioned noticing the changes around her in a comment she shared on my last post.  Recently I've felt tick-tock time is losing its meaning to me.  I am losing my ability to feel the seconds go by and know what part of the clock the hands are resting on.

If people have super powers, I have had two.  I can almost always tell where north is.  From that I can usually point toward any direction.    I am sitting in a windowless room right now, and just pointed north and then checked it on my iPhone compass.  I was off by less than 5 degrees.  This doesn't mean I don't get lost.  It just means I usually get un-lost pretty fast. 

Sadly, my second super power, being able to intrinsically tell tick-tock time without looking at a clock and being accurate within 15 minutes is fading fast and is nearly gone.  For many years, I only carried a watch when to-the-minute accuracy was needed.  Now I wear a watch so I know which hour it is in tick-tock time.

I use the term tick-tock time to represent the human-made time measurement system based on seconds, minutes, and hours.  While it is dividing a solar year down into 365 days (not including leap year) with 24 hours in a day, with each hour consisting of 60 minutes, and each minute containing 60 seconds.  That is 525,600 seconds in a year.  I have no mechanism in me to note the passage of a second, minute, or hour anymore.

If we are healthy, our resting heart rate is around 60 beats-per-minute (bpm).  I can't trust my heart to tell time though.  When I sleep, it drops to less than that rate.  If I am excited, it can easily double.  Without having an internal mechanism anymore to tell tick-tock time, where am I getting my cues?  The natural universe provides it.

The earth's daily rotation provides a good basic visual time piece, light or no light.  My next favorite is the 28 day lunar cycle.  I know that if it is a new moon now, it will be a full moon in 14 days.  I am always looking up at the moon, when visible to give me a clue as to it's path.  Here is a link to learn about the phases of the moon. 

For the past few years I've felt the seasonal transitions more and more.  I like some more than others, preferring fall and winter to spring and summer.  I feel each one though.  Every August I can tell when autumn is coming by noticing the lengthening of shadows and the quality of light around me.  I feel the winter solstice by enjoying the long, dark, cold days of winter.  The seasonal changes are one measurement of time I feel deep in me.

Maybe my spirit is trying to tell me something with my loss of ability to internally tell tick-tock time.  It isn't the second that separates present me from past and future me.  It is the changing of the universe around me affected by the cycles we physically go through.  I can't control these cycles.  All I can do is recognize them and make sure I live as much as possible through them. 

 

Gabbi

Gabbi - 062312

Gabbi is the first model I photographed in Las Vegas and was a joy to work with.  She has an enthusiasm for modeling that exudes beauty and a deep sultry energy that simmers with sexiness, even in quiet moments.  I appreciated her patience as I set up and tore down areas to work in and for going with my ideas as she integrated her own magic into them.

Gabbi - 062312

Here are few photos from the session.  I am also using many of the images we created in photo collages, my new frontier.

Thanks Gabi!  I hope we work together again.

Gabbi - 062312