The days after New Year’s are days where nothing much happens. When I was a busy magazine photographer, I never felt guilty in not doing anything in them. Now that I am not obliged to do anything except sleep, wake up, feed Niño and Niña, rest, do nothing and then sleep again, I go through pangs of anxiety that are awfully existential.

I know that I have to keep going as I do not know anybody who would take care of my cats. And so I write.

At my age of 81 I must confess that this Latin macho is no longer in the least interested in women. I smile when I see a woman wearing a dress on the street. I hate what Lululemon has done to the female rear end. I am tired of cleavage and I am not interested in either dromedary or bactrian camels. I am only interested in one woman and she is my Rosemary. She is dead.

My extensive negative and slide files, not to mention my digital files have at least 700 women wearing very little if nothing at all. Of them and of my other files I think back to sometime around 1990 when Rosemary and I were driving away from out Kerrisdale home to visit our Lillooet daughter. I told Rosemary, “We could hire and arsonist while we are gone. We would return to our house that would all be burned to the ground.” She smiled and said it wasn’t such a bad idea to have no posessions.

As I get older the idea of legacy becomes less important.

But thanks to inspiration by Joan Didion to write so I can find out what I am thinking and Garry Winogrand who photographed things to find out what they looked like photographed, I write and I take photographs.

I must tip my hat to my friend C who has nagged me to photograph her since 2019 (I have photographed her 11 times). At one point, if you realize I am not interested in women, be they dressed or undressed, you must understand that I was becoming bored.

But I never got to that point as C’s nagging (a tad gentle) made me think of new techniques and to take chances and do new things. I am now inspired by Didion,Winogrand and C.

While my peers show me sunsets on their phones I am happily printing C’s pictures for her and for me to enjoy and realize that at 81 I am still pretty good at what I do.

Thank you C.

The photo you see here I took on 2023 Halloween. I used my digital Fuji X-E3 and I used a shutter of ½ second while I slowly moved my camera from up to down. I focused on a mirror on the other side of my little studio so that I could include myself.

And today I had a visitor. It was my friend Marv Newland. He sat down on my studio bench and 5 minutes later he walked out of my office with an 8 1/2  by 11 inch print.

We went to town and had lunch with MacLeod's Don Stewart and talked about books. Returning I left Newland at Miri's barbershop on Broadway (around the corner from my house). Newland, Christopher Gaze and I coincidentally get our haircut by the same Albanian.