The moon rests en utero waiting for her to release the night. Dusk hangs heavy and exhausted long beyond time for the day's retirement. She lingers in purgatory between ambivalence and confidence, willing to liberate twilight when her powers feel strong and her courage is high. She makes her choice carefully. It must be an unfailing ride to ferry the moths into the depths of darkness, for it's there that broken souls step out of their own hell and find solace in the crowded shadows. She wraps herself tightly in her illuminated coat and contemplates the pounding below her hip. It's not fear, but anticipation. Longing to reach the place where she'll find peace in opaque dreams. Hidden from the eyes of those that would judge her; removed from the tight grasp of those that would tame her. She turns the wheel to her lunar guide and blossoms like the moonflower in eventide. ~ Francesca

A Poo-joo, a 403, but don't let its modesty fool you. My brother's car. He earned it with a year's work in the garage and built it up to compete with the finest. It has gained me much status since he showed me the engine and taught me to drive it on those long afternoons. One night we spotted my brother and a girl heading off to The Car with a bottle of Schnapps, stolen from my dad who always seeks solace at its bottom. My brother looked absurd groveling and spouting some line about "Nothing lasts forever. Not a thing. There is only now". Amongst sniggers and shoves we quickly followed and to our wonderment saw how she removed her top. Such strange, strange mysteries these girls and certainly not worth the grunting trouble. I would forgive him, but she is the sister of a rival gang. We flashed the torch as The Car sped off and in the swirling dust, waving a bra, the boys turned on me with delight. There was nothing for it! I picked up the drink. A challenge. A race. The three of us against the rest. One lap, fastest time wins. To hell with tomorrow and its consequences. ~ Kalahari

The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins. The traveler is invited to visit the city and to examine some old postcards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, young ladies with white parasols in the place of the factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits: admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis, compared to the old, provincial region, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial town was before one's eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if the city had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

Towering gates covered with ivy, and ghostly sculptures of angels, and solemn figures of men, women, and children with their arms crossed in resignation upon their breasts. Graveyard sculptures. Brass plaques, screwed into the towering pillars of granite. A dove is looking down from atop a family gravestone, made from metal so it could not fly away. Dozens of stones of all sizes in the small meadow. In orderly rows and well-kept grass. Some broken. One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough, and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate.

There are some girls, that never become women. And some women that never become ladies. Females are innately the more vulnerable species, though saying so out loud just pisses them off. But it's the truth. Leading with emotion, hearts on sleeves, timid and subservient due to low self-worth; low self-esteem. Those that are happy to remain girls don't question their inner strength. They have not been tempted by the fruits of their own minds, by the ache of their untouched souls, by the places deep within the female body that once touched, must be touched again and again, or she'll fade away. Those girls kneel before life, without the call to submission, but simply because that is where they fit comfortably in their own existence. What makes a woman a woman, is the ability to allow the call of her inner Goddess to be heard by all parts of her being. Finding her inner masochist, her inner witch, her inner Aphrodite, by allowing temptations of the mind and flesh to seep into her soul. That woman craves the strength her power instills in her. And she craves even more a man that can take her power and make her even stronger, by relieving her of it. The burden of power can be heavy for a female, and sometimes a woman needs to be a girl. And as for the woman that may never be a lady, she is unique. Some women can turn off the inner beast, present themselves with a certain level of reservation, in the right company. But some, those truly wild creatures, are of the rawest natural state. Those are the women that need to be tamed, by one that holds their best interest, within his reins. ~ Francesca

Is a dream a lie if it doesn't come true, or is it something worse? 'Wall Street' once has turned into 'Route 66'. The Great Depression answered the financial crash of '29 followed by the 'Dust Bowl', formerly the greatest natural catastrophe caused by man's excess. Homes for sale or rent. Rooms to let - fifty cents. The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. Miss American Pie drove her Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. Eight miles a gallon and driving fast, she landed foul on the grass. No James Dean to borrow her a coat. Moss grows fat on a rolling stone and while we were looking down, the jester stole the thorny crown. Jack is nimble, Jack is quick, Jack Flash sits on a candlestick. No angel born in Hell and fire is the Devil's only friend, and the three men we admire most, The Father, Son, the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train to the coast. There we are, all in one place. A generation lost in space. No time left to start again, but them good old boys are drinking Whiskey and Rye, singing "Bye-bye, Miss American Pie, this will be the day that we die."

She was born in nineteen-sixty and I heard it said that if you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren't really there. She could spend a lifetime trying to remember good times past, could maybe even hear her tires scream 'Drive me wild', but the thing that makes them glory days is the fact that they are done. It's over now and she has settled down, forgotten but not gone. That is when I met her. It was in the late century and, well, she had been passed around a bit. Her soul is bowed down to the dust and her belly is stuck to the ground. A garden gnome, that is what she has become. What a destiny! Somebody in her checkered past had smashed her windscreen, like a person who'd had facial reconstruction, her features never lined up exactly plumb again. Broken trust, creeping rust, worse for wear and stranded alone for evermore. When I framed her she was trembling. A pile of rust, a fuse-popping, mouse-bitten, oil-spilling mess, with the air of shattered beauty that only fallen angels have. "You still have pretty," and by the time I was done, she was exactly as I wanted her.

Immigrate me! The peopling of America. From California to the New York island. This land was made for you and me. Ellis Island was the symbol of American immigration and was the gateway for millions to the United States. All had hopes for greater opportunity in the New World but the human dream is by no means a requiem for a dream where one has to be asleep to believe it, but rather a dream where you have to be on alert and creative to bring it to full bloom. As Miss Liberty addresses the consumer culture in the American dreams: the 'Dream of Abundance' offering a cornucopia of material goods to all Americans, making them proud to be the richest society on earth. Then the 'Dream of a Democracy of Goods' whereby everyone has access to the same products regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or class, thereby challenging the aristocratic norms of the rest of the world, whereby only the rich or well-connected are granted access to luxury. Next, the 'Dream of Freedom of Choice' with its ever-expanding variety of goods allows people to fashion their own particular lifestyle.

While photographing some colorful coast at dawn, stagnant in my work, I looked down the curving shore and, in the distance, I saw a human figure moving like a dancer. As it got closer, I noticed that the figure was that of a young man and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean. He kept on bending and throwing as he walked the endless stretch toward me. As he came near, I could see that he was throwing beach dolls, abandoned on the sand by the tide, back into the sea. When he was close enough I asked him why he was working so hard at this strange task. He replied that the tide is going out and that the sun is up and would dry the bronzed Barbies and they would die. I said to him that I thought it was foolish and that he should realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are dolls all along every mile. One man alone could never make a difference. He smiled as he picked up the next puppet, and while hurling it far into the sea he said: "Well, it makes a difference for this one!" I abandoned my photographic work and spent the morning tossing beach dollies.