The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives, dead men were on that train, wearing all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black misery, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt. Industrial, modern. All that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown. Those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, on the home-pile of rotten railway sleepers and sawdust, bath of steam, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely overheated tin cans with rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of wood stacks, the noise of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of iron, bloated espresso machine balancing on thin tracks and sphincters of dynamos - all these entangled in your mummied roots. And you there rolling towards me in the steamy sunset; all your glory in your form. The nightmare train went on through the milky sunlight its whistle screeching and the dead men inside laughing.

The world, as we know it, is a heap of people, a sea of tiny flames. Each person shines with his or her own light. No two flames are alike. There are big flames and little flames, flames of every color. Some people's flames are so still they do not even flicker in the wind, while others have wild flames that fill the air with sparks. Some foolish flames neither burn nor shed light, but others blaze with life so fiercely that you can not look at them without blinking, and if you approach you shine in the fire. There are those of poor spirit and there are those of great spirit. None are without it but the flame flickers pretty low in some cases. The majority of people seem to be nothing but a little flickering flame. You know that when you match them against an individual who is all fire, all radiance. Those in whom the flame of the spirit runs high truly are the extraordinary examples of human beings. If you are great you can stay that way and people will believe in you, swear by you, turn the world upside down for you. But if you are only partly great, or just a nobody, then what happens to you is lost.

There is something predatory about photography, it is the same with love. It allows a glimpse of herself through the trap of the lens. Through this windscreen, she leads you down a road just far enough to show that she is present, you sense there is more to her than she cares to reveal but this is tantalizing, captivating. She will relieve your burden to hunt, her elegance and mystery causing you to be the envy of all hunters and so she becomes yours and gets entangled in your fisherman's net. Love is peculiar, unfathomable. In wise stories it is seldom a romantic tryst between two lovers, rather it is a combination of understanding and misunderstanding but it is an allure that pulls the photographic eye. There will come a time, however, that you see that part of her. That part that the photographic lens did not reveal, the skeletal vision that will follow you where you run. She is the one of whom most men are terrified but if you can endure, if you can find kindness somewhere to untangle and embrace her then she will reward you with passion. The hidden mystery of her will voluptuously feed your every want and need, the destination of her remaining forever a million miles away. ~ Kalahari

Awakened by the pulse of the glittering asphalt jungle pounding in my ears. Sending up a silent invocation to any deity that might hear; let it be the thundering of wild horses just outside my window, knocking on my soul. And there it is again, a persistent summons; mount up girl, it's time to ride. I look outside, my naked frame is hidden behind drapes of black. The skeletal truth is there staring back. No wild Mustangs only metal and steel and dying dreams. I lick my lips, salty and dry, Whiskey's sweetness lingers in the cracks. Contemplating my next course of action, I slip on a short little number that feels like freedom on my flesh. I find the answer as my mind wanders by, it's glaringly clear; time to get out of here. Gonna venture to the desert, where it's as hot and bitter as me. My pony may be a bit more tamed, but he's a fierce metal steed, indeed. Waiting, salivating, hungry for deliverance. We race to the outskirts, devouring the open road. Yet, try as we may we can't seem to escape the concrete chains. At least we're finally alone, my horse with no name, and me. I dismount quickly, shedding the layers from my skin, no longer cloaked by choking inhibitions. The sun and the stallion, the only witnesses to my liberation and the only companions I need. ~ Francesca

Seeing a mother in her beach chair, reading a book under an umbrella by the water's edge while her children play beside her and she was suddenly and strangely reminded of being four years old at the beach, crying when the wind came up and blew away the castle she had made. Her mother had told her she could make another one if she liked, but it hadn't stopped her crying because what she had thought was permanent was not permanent after all, but only made out of sand that vanished at the touch of wind and water. Beauty - what is beauty, forsooth? Form and color, that is surface only. Fortune - what is fortune? Nothing is ever a pleasure to him who has to labor for it. Truth - you die in the pursuit, and the sea beats the beach as it did a thousand years ago. Some people might have a shallow understanding of what it means to be alive, but you don't need a whole lot. Being in the water and smelling that salt air and hearing the seagulls. Free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. The beach becomes a kind of Utopia. The place where all your dreams might come true.

Now, everything above the horizon is clear to me. I am going to live now among the life maladies. Tomorrow is the result of many yesterdays and comes with a potent, cumulative effect. I am tomorrow what I chose to be yesterday and the day before. It is not possible that tomorrow I may negate and nullify everything that led me to this present moment. Death is behind me and birth too. There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or do not live up until their death. They do not honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on movies, money, family, fucking. They swallow God without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can not hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There is nothing left to die. Now, away with lamentation! Now, away with elegies and dirges! Let the dead eat the dead. Now, let us dance about the rim of the crater, an expiring trampoline dance, but a dance at least!

An angel's face showing up at the crossroad. She came from Sicil-y, hitchhiked her way across Ital-y. Hauling her case, thumbin' a ride. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. She's free in her wildness, she's a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules. Time for her isn't something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water. As for you girls, you must risk everything for freedom, and give everything for passion, loving everything that your hearts and your bodies love. The only thing higher for a girl and more sacred for a young woman than her freedom and her passion should be her desire to make her life into poetry, surrendering everything she has to create a life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in her imagination. You may call her a tramp, a gypsy, but it goes deeper than that. She's not looking for anything. She's not aimless. It's just that her aims are different from most. No longer to be poisoned by civilization she flees and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. And home she wrote: "Dear Mom, I've hitchhiked to eternity. I shall not return. Don't be mad."

In spite of all the advances of civilization, the woman has remained as she came out of the hand of nature. She has the nature of a savage, who is faithful or faithless, magnanimous or cruel, according to the impulse that dominates her at the moment. Art should be functional. And art should tell a story; a narrative that places you in the situation of every photograph, allowing the viewer to be as closest to the soul of the subject as possible. The distinctive feature of the photographer is his ability to surprise and to exceed our expectations. But who really knows what is on in the photographer's mind when work is created? "Decipher me or I will devour you!" The female bloom, nearly stripped, but never obvious, nor offering little, rides lightly on the time's line where space opens into the high plain's depth. The feminine form factor, represented by the curves of elegance and playfulness, positioned in a barren, male landscape, symbolizing life's portraiture of relationships. The joining of the two human universes, male and female, merged in nature's perfect but rare Fibonacci harmony.