Where the night is so warm and so strange

That no one is afraid of themselves

 I've wanted to do a shoot with this coyote skull for awhile.  My boyfriend and I picked him up in Arkansas last fall while we were in the wooded hills biking cross-country.  He lives on my desk, nestled among glass jars and dusty baubles, blankly watching me go about my business.  I'm sure he was happy to get some fresh air and enjoy his time in front of my lens.

If you want to favorite these, a few of them are on my Flickr.

It begins in your mind, always

 I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

-Yann Martel

These photos were made possible by Katie, my human tripod/fashion model extraordinaire.  Hers is the face that can often be found gracing my frames, most of the time in fact.  Shooting with her is always a pleasure because she knows what to do in front of a camera, which is less than I can say for most of my models.  (But I love them anyway.)

More photos on my flickr.

It's not the cry you hear the most

 

Two weeks and I will be back in school.  My major will have been changed from Psychology to Multimedia, a prospect that both excites and liberates me.  I am not a science person; I never have been.  My passion is in the aesthetic.

Anatomy of a sufferer

She is silent, these days.  The demons no longer scream at her—instead they have wound their clammy fingers around her throat so she can no longer speak for herself.  They are content, those demons, because they believe they have won.

What does she think of all this?  To be honest, she herself doesn’t know.  When others ask, she tells them she will pry the claws from her throat and reclaim her breathing space.  Tomorrow, she says.  Or, Another time.  When I’m stronger.  But she is never stronger.

Hours turn into days and weeks and yet she has the feeling of being trapped in an hourglass, sand pouring into her nostrils and eyes and suddenly she is blind and airless, like a cold wet fish in a dank, dark cave under the earth.

What does it mean?

Of our elaborate plans, the end

 

The days grow longer and I find myself sinking into the sleep of lethargy.  Walls seem to shrink and the air is stale in my lungs, producing a drowsy effect.  All I can do is sleep and hope tomorrow will bring something to wake me from my stupor.

And in the mirror she saw a fool

I wish I could shed this skin and take to the air in the form of a butterfly released from its cocoon, soft and strong and new.  Beautiful.  To be free is to be weightless, and vice versa.  This is the stuff of my daydreams.