A BIG STEP - THE MAGAZINE

Dear followers, I have created a fashion magazine based on the photography and writing you find here. Please have a look at it here Lone Wolf Magazine, or purchase a copy here Magcloud. I would love to hear your thoughts about it, and hope you fall in love with it.

BAD WATERS

PC: Alison Scarpulla

Years have passed, and in that time I've wandered leaving pieces of my innocence behind like bread crumbs. I'm not as quick to believe that everyone is basically honest and that all smiling strangers have good intentions. It took me forever to realize that all those people - the back-handed-complementers, the ones who step briskly in your path just as you're passing, the self-deceivers, the ones that feign deafness just to have you repeat yourself, those who actually care about who you're wearing and how you're wearing it - that they're the ones with the problem. Why did I ever think it was personal? These people surround you like mosquitoes by a summer pond, but there comes a breaking point when they all suddenly disappear. They're there as they always were, but you will find that you've developed a navigation system that simply steers you away from the bad waters where they lurk.

NOTHING LEFT, NOTHING FORGOTTEN

PC: Eliot Lee Hazel

There is nothing as blindingly heart-breaking and ultimately humbling as the death of someone you love. The unjustifiable sudden absence of your parents, your best friend or your boyfriend. In the press of pain you will finally see, perhaps for the first time, where meaning ends and where it begins. You will no longer be able to avoid seeing, perhaps for the first time, the storm of wasted moments you've brought upon yourself. And you will finally understand the inevitable unfolding tragedy of life. You will not care about the folds in your clothes, or the fall of hair around your face. What does it really matter? Now, as never before, you will dream about nothing but love. And there is nothing that you are not going to miss. The way they said your name, the songs they liked to sing, the shape of their fingernails. Nothing will fade. Instead, every small memory will bear down on your heart. A silent melody of pain to remind you that nothing lasts.

DAISY FIELDS IN HEAVEN

PC: Tim Barber

You were never long in your goodbyes little cousin. But just this once I wish you could have lingered. If my heart is made of only a few small pieces, you have left it with fewer still. And now the only thing that remains of you lies buried in the clouded corners of my sleep where the past hangs heavy. Remember the way we used to play barefoot in the summer rain, and catch tiny green frogs in a tiny green village by the woods? Remember swimming with smallest silver fish in the coldest river? Remember the daisy field you said was your favorite place in the world, and how it took our rusty bikes half a day to get there? Some memories are the happiest of miseries. I never got to say goodbye. So goodbye little brother. Goodbye. I hope they have daisy fields in heaven.

THE PAINTED VEIL

PC: Candace Meyer

Simple. Honest. Modest. Uncontrived. The four most beautiful words in any language. Sometimes when you surround yourself with so many painted faces, with their painted personalities you start to lose sight of the fact that the world at large does not look or behave that way. Not everyone wants to paint their blue soul silver, or their red heart gold. Some people keep the colors they were born with.

BECAUSE VANITY BURNS BRIGHTER

PC: Emma Summerton for Pop Magazine

You fray yourself apart to be important - to be seen, admired, emulated. You float fastidiously on an incandescent belief that you are special. But let's be clear - you're not just special, you are irreverently more than that. You are everything and anything to avoid being somebody's equal. Or worse, somebody's inferior. You need to be the only plus sign on a crowded page of zeros. The brightest light on midnight's horizon. No light can outshine your blinding vanity. Not kindness, not friendship, not love. If there were just one thing I wish I could grasp in this life-time, it would be the secret desire of empty hearts to empty the hearts of others.

A BEAUTIFUL BACTERIA

We are never so vulnerable to suffering as when we love. No pain runs deeper than that closest to the heart. In love, there's no escaping love. Everything you touch, see, smell and taste reflects the love you carry, and every new emotion takes on the color and fury of the fire in your heart. You will never truly know anger until you've been in love and angry. You will never know loneliness until you've been in love and lonely. Cupid was no god. He was a bacteria.

FALLING OFF YOUR ROCKER

PC: Michael Tintiuc in Huge Magazine

Do you ever worry that you will lose your mind one day? Do you ever feel like you already have? How fine is the line we're walking? How far is the fall?

THE SWAY & SWELL

Your heart is a drummer, his song is the only song. And you, unmoved and unwilling, have no choice but to dance. You are stuck in your head like a sunflower seed pressed hard against its shell, deaf to the symphony inside you. But beneath the seal of skin, in the swell of your heart your soul sways like the summer grass caught coiling in the wind. Beyond your shell you are more beautiful than you realize.

PRINTED PROPHECY

All the antique shops in New York sell antique photographs, tossed loosely in an antique tin. These are the smallest histories, discarded paper pieces of a stranger's heart. Sharp sepia faces no one remembers, whispering memories no one can hear. They break my heart. Perhaps one day, when your own familiar face takes on the exact shape and shadow of a stranger's, you too will find yourself reflected in the rusty tin heart of an antique box waiting to be recognized. We walk blindly, not realizing that these small histories are printed prophecies of a single truth.

Eventually everything is forgotten.

THE IMITATION

PC: Du Juan

Years and years spent hiding under white wings where neither storm nor sun could touch me. I've laughed hard through tightly shut lips, and only politely tapped my feet to the wildest rhythm of life. My thoughts were echoes of the thoughts of others. Their ideas were the light I basked in, hoping that something unique would grow out of my own heart. Nothing but envy grew. The frame under your skin begins to crack the moment you uncover the lies you've been telling yourself these years and years. To be a creator is to be impelled by creation. To be a hack is to be impelled by praise.

THE DAY AFTER

PC: Claudia Bitzer

You wait for the day after, because the day after pads the paleness of an uneventful life. We live in leaps. Our minds extend over hollow weeks to star-shaped points on our calendar. We're always looking forward hoping for a distant brightness, unaware that its glare drains the color of everything before. But we need something to look forward to, don't we? We need to be distracted from seeing the fact that most of us are unhappy about the way our lives turned out.

TO HUNGER FOR THE DREAM

PC: Bruno Ripoche

I always thought that reaching my dreams would feel like winning the lottery. I imagined running, arms-flailing down the street shouting my happiness. But no. Dreams are hard work. It means cereal dinners, 15 hour work days and $0 pay cheques. It means wearing the same three pairs of shoes year after year (even though you've worn the soles in). It's not having a cell phone or a social life. It's accepting that you are going to be very lost for a while, with wolves trailing not too far behind. So when the moment that I've been dreaming of for years finally came, I didn't run or scream or flail my arms as I had expected. I sat back, sighed a sigh of relief, and went out to buy myself some new shoes.

THE CARROT

At the end of the day, we're all just looking for our carrot. But why is it that the carrots we want most are those furthest out of our reach? My carrot is hidden somewhere under a stack of papers in New York City. It's the freshest carrot of them all.

FALLING LEAVES. FALLING GAZE.

PC: Claudine Doury

To all the things both sweeter and warmer than the summer sun. I will close my eyes and think of you until June breaks over the horizon once again.

THE DROUGHT

PC: The Original Hipster by Julia Chesky

His life hung like a rain drop over an empty well. The notes that echoed in his heart were whispers of emptiness and every beating moment was a drought. He had been made a man by lack. The lack of laughter, the lack of friendship, the lack of love. And now that there was nothing left to lose, the fog of self-deception grew thicker still.