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| Jo-Ann & Yuliya |
In my current vein of contrasting and comparing words in Spanish and in English, I came up with a synonym of joy in Spanish which is júbilo. It originated from the Latin iubilum which in its verb form iubilare means to cry in joy. I then associated all that with the Spanish to retire which is to jubilar. I am a jubilado (retiree). Do retirees cry in joy?
In my past, in that other century, I had a gig with Canadian Pacific Limited. I photographed trucks, trains, airplanes. That was fun. But I also had to do retirements. These were depressing events in which men who might have worked for 50 years were given a watch and or a rocking chair. I hated going to them but Rosemary would look at me with “we need the money” eyes.
All the above is but a prelude to the idea that a photographer (me) is not all that happy about being retired. My sense of utility or usefulness is simply not there. Yes, my cats have to be fed and yes, Niño needs his daily walk.
There is one solution to that retired conundrum and that is to keep creating challenges by finding ways of writing stuff like this or the idea that photographically I can still push myself (no art director to do that anymore) to limits of what I can do.
That happened today when I thought of my sense of emptiness in living without my Rosemary. I wrote the blog (link below). I thought on how I was going to illustrate it. I came up with the idea of an empty glass without any water. In it I placed an inkjet transparency of Rosemary and scanned it. It was lovely. But I have to be truthful in that I was not sure this would work so I tried it first with a shot of my two friend Jo-Anne and Yuliya who posed for me in my old studio.
I was very happy with the result. Tomorrow will bring more inspiration to push the envelope for this jubilado.
