Somaly Mam by Douglas Kirkland

Somaly Mam is radiant, a light, a fire, a flame. She blazes a path, one woman set to change the course of the world so long as she walks the earth. Orphaned at a young age then sold into a brothel in Cambodia around age 12, Somaly Mam knows the truth about the slave trade. She not only escaped, but has liberated thousands of women and children from sexual slavery and aided tens of thousands more in having a voice and a choice in their life. She risks her life for the lives of others. To listen to her story, and to hear the stories of the women and girls she has assisted, is a lesson in honor, humility, and humanity.

Few speak on the sale of human beings, the outcomes of these transactions too illicit for polite company. But Somaly speaks, and when she does, people listen. Eyes are opened. Policies begin to change. But most of all, lives are saved. The slave trade runs rampant, crossing borders everywhere from New York City to Phnom Penh. It’s an international issue, but it does not receive the attention that it deserves. Yet when people meet Somaly, they feel charged to take action.

Price Arana, CEO of Press Cabinet, a Los Angeles-based branding and advertising agency, first met Somaly Mam in the fall of 2012, at a private gathering of friends organized by Angella Nazarian. As Nazarian recounts, “For the past few years I have been doing in depth research on women who have been the trailblazers—women who have dared to have a bold vision for change and have impacted their field in the most meaningful way. Somaly Mam has single-handedly brought sex trafficking on a global platform and has saved thousands of girls from sexual slavery. I was so touched by Somaly’s own life and work that I dedicated a chapter on Somaly’s life and work in my book, Pioneers of the Possible: Celebrating Visionary Women of the World [which was previously featured in Le Journal’s Book Review No. 39.]

Read the full story at LE JOURNAL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE

Douglas Kirkland and Somaly Mam, photographed by Price Arana

Team Somaly ~*~

all good things are wild and free

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave,
find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities
and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

All good things are wild and free.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters
compared to what lives within us.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

~*~
Photographs by Danny Lyon
Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

deep inside the hollow of bone

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Untitled (Black Skull), 1982

The trees stand without leaves, gathered close and deep. Their branches bare, shake, forsaken and angered. The wind whips through their spidery limbs like a lash coming down hard against the penitent’s back. The winds warn of the coming storm, howling in the night as they rush along. Hovering impossibly low, the clouds begin to mourn and a wail of torment sounds as the trees nod and groan. Small branches snap under pressure and are suddenly sailing free through the gales with no destination at hand, no thought or concern to where they may land.

Nino looks to the sky and sees nothing there as an eerie silence stills the air. His fists clench at his side, fingernails biting into his palms, as his jaw grinds forth, jutting out in determination. Taking one step forth, his boot casts upon a fallen limb and as his weight shifts, the twig splits angrily. He feels the earth give way under his foot as a bellow sounds. Slow. Low. Uncomfortable. His hands are damp and his throat begins to close.

It is cold, the kind of cold that is felt far below, deep inside the hollow of bone. It is the kind of cold that rattles and roars and sobs and moans. Nino begins to shiver until the shiver becomes a shake and then it is like the tremors of withdrawal. THe ait carries a woman’s laugh as the wind rumbles into a thunderous rage. Frozen in place, he is unable to escape as he feels something prickly brush against his face.

His hands tremble, agitated and afraid as he feels something within him start to break. It is deep in his chest, buried below the ribs, inside the center of his being that pumps life into his body. It is here in the seat of his heart that his body and soul finally split apart. He can feel the tearing of organ, the breaking of bone, the ripping of flesh as his spirit leaves his body, flees even.

A flash of white light strikes, illuminating a silhouette. Ling black hair sails through the air, spreading wide like a net. The net expands into a web, stick and sweet, and at the center of this trap is a woman he knows, the woman he hates. She is young and slim, almost starved, and her scarlet eyes feast upon Nino’s tremulous form. Ven aqui. Come to me, she calls softly, her voice as seductive as the sirens of The Odyssey.

A wave of desire sweeps through Nino’s spirit, suffusing him with warmth and where the sky was dark and foreboding, it becomes something succulent and soft, and he can taste this craving on his tongue and it tastes like a life that was never his. She calls to him again, this time silently, speaking the words he has longed to hear. He feels his spirit relax and release as she summons him forth, and he moves faster and faster now, flying to her side at once.

He lands in the web with deeply beating heart and he looks at her and she looks at him and he sees her eyes are voracious and dark. The sweet scent of innocence fills her with an excitement she can barely contain. Her mouth is wet, so wet that she can taste his flesh and as her pink lips spread slowly they reveal teeth of jagged edge.

She smiles in delight as Nino’s eyes widen in horror and she moves closer to him, closer and closer. She reaches for a little hand, a pale and delicate paw with sharp red talons on the end of each fingertip, talons sharp as claws as saws all the better to cut you in half and she carefully draws her nail across the side of his face.

A trickle of blood rises to the surface as a torrent of fear washes over him and in an instant it is over just as quickly as it began. His spirit is driven back into the body it had left behind, returning to the womb of his heart and crawling all the way inside. There is a pain, a kind of pain he knows too well and though he normally pushes it back down, this time, it is too much and he has lost control.

His mouth opens wide and a strangled gasp breaks from his lips and it is in this moment that a shadow rushes out of his chest. It is a small shadow, dark but not opaque, and it knows not except it must return to the universe from whence it first came. And as the shadow disappears in the darkness of light, Nino is empty and exhausted, wavering in the wind.

Stand! he commands, knees locking in place as his feet sink deeper into the earth. He feels himself sinking and looks down to discover his boots are submerged in a thick and viscous substance. The more he pulls against it, the tighter it hold until he realizes what is happening. He is standing in quicksand and it’s only a matter of time. If he could release himself from the boots that hold his feet… If he could just grab that branch over there and pull himself to safety… If there were someone, anyone, nearby who would hear his scream… But there is nothing, no one, not even She.

A panic rises in Nino’s chest as he realizes that not even he can help himself. He is now knee deep in the cold and clammy muck and he realizes that time, time is all he has left and time is running out. He looks to the sky and sees nothing there. The storm as passed and silence fills the air.

Nino feels himself sinking as the world rises up. Resolute, he knows the truth. He is trapped, held captive, abandoned and alone. Failure burns his flesh, his aching bones. His cheeks are aflame, ashamed, debased once more. Rage boils and bubbles and foams on his tongue. With the venom of the Furies, he cries out—

 ~*~

(this passage, since deleted, once began my novel)
The Kingdom of Eternal Night

today is your day ~

Ilse Bing. Double Auto Portrait in the Window. France, 1947.

Rosario Leotta

I remember when the Salvation Army had that warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen, way over by the water, and honey over here had the fake Visa cards. He was generous and rather stylish so good times were had by all for two months during the Fall of 19 Ninety Four. That was the season of Salsoul classics on cd, dance your ass off in the apartment before heading on out to Factory. And while once upon a time I had been wearing Timberlands, Levis, and crop tops, after I had seen Nadja Auermann on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar getting her dragon, her drag on, honey child I had never seen such glamour for all my life and I was—

enraptured, enamored, enthralled, entranced—I was en too deep and it was just me diving into a pool of turquoise shimmering aqua du jour only no, it was not, it was stumbling drunk into Barneys back when it was on Eighteenth, a shelter from the darkening skies that came earlier and earlier each day. And I had to, I needed color like nothing ever before I was, yes, I was and I had to have it like give it to me and it was electric pink and neon orange glosses from the Prescriptives counter like my candy store like the best place on earth, and I slid those precious liquids across my lips and slipping and sliding wild, wet and wild colors like my 80s dreams and I was blonde, was I blonde? Mmaybe not. But I was up in stilettos and baubles from Coco Canal and that was back when dudes had there wares spread out on sheets along the streets like Twenty-Third and Sixth, and we’d be walking along when a marvelous belt called me out my name: Girl take me home and I’ll dance along your hips all night and day and night. Whatchu say, baby girl?

I took it home and my closet was most grateful for the times I’d take it out and make it twirl. I think—but I am not sure—I was wearing it that day back in Two Thou, summer was it, and I was in Chicago, yes, I was and there I had been, staying on the campus of that school not knowing a single person or where to get food so I took it to the streets. And it was all big hair, big curls, and a fingerwave around my hairline, and it was me floating along like a butterfly in a grey jersey Margiela skirt that dusted the pavement as I swept along. And a black tank top, really more a muscle shirt, and it had long sleeves that I snapped off and It sat like black canvas, a simple sheath, a satiny shield along my chest and yes there it was my faux Chanel belt belly dancing as I strolled down the street.

Mighta been distinct, obvious, oblivious, I could be. It’s rather yes so I pay it no nevermind and when honey rolled up all on me, I had the strangest feeling things were playing out from a script I had not yet read like the days pages from Another World back when it was on NBC. He was stringy, stringbean, white boy with a British accent, and he had been up, up like Dracula haunting the night, and the eightball was gone and now he, could he bum a smoke, and I said, “Take me to get something to eat.”

And so we proceeded, well he proceeded to lead me and I was pleased, see how helpful men will be, and me he took me to this little boulangerie that had seats in the piazza outside a red brick church with white accents that gave it a birthday cake kinda vibe. And we sat there, him telling me how he had some weed and we should get up after I get done with me day and I’m smiling saying, Suuuure maybe, sounding like I don’t know just yet, but you know I never had any intention of checking honey ever again.

But why ruin his day? It had just begun, and he sat there smoking my cigarettes, eating nothing, smoking away, and the day would just begin and it would become nothing so much as a vague haze of beige in my memory, lots of white folk, lots of books that were handmade, making the book something of a craft, reminding me of where it all began, right, like I was ten and I—

had decided it was time. I would write this book, a collection of short stories about Mr. Crocodile, who had this B&B, and all the characters that came and went, went and came, and I decided to illustrate it with colored pencils. It was done on looseleaf paper. And the covers were made of cardboard, which I then wrapped in sea blue tissue paper, and I drew the title real big: THE HOTEL IN SOUTHHAMPTON on it, and I bound it with gold pushpins that ate away at the tissue paper.

I had it for awhile, and then like everything else ~ bon voyage. And I sent it to wherever these things go, maybe a portal through another dimension. But it’s always happening, whether I know it or not, and it occurs to me that means there are countless opportunities to jump frequencies, vibe from one dimension and the next, go across time and space and be this vibe, this vibration, this feeling, this energy, this source, this voice whispering in my ear and I smile like oo you know, and you do and thas what makes it worth alla every thing in the end.

The End, it’s true.

From Russia With Love

Molding Of an Artistic Casting at Kasli Iron Works,1910 © LOC, LC-DIG-prokc-20507 By Sergei Mikhailovich from Nostalgia copyright Gestalten 2013

Rostov Veliki (‘Great Rostov’), one of the oldest cities in Russia, along with Suzdal, Uglich, Yaroslavl and Vladimir, part of the ‘Gold Ring’ around Moscow. The Resurrection Church in the Kremlin, 1911. Three-color photograph by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, from the album Views along the Upper Volga between Yaroslavl, Vladimir and Kostroma. © Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC, Prokundin-Gorkii Collection

Grand Duchess Maria in the garden of the summer residence at Livadia, Crimea, c. 1910. Photograph. © Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Photography records what we forget, offering a map back into the past into lives we would never otherwise know, if not for the camera to record their existence. We are all anonymous, until we are not. We keep records to prevent the inevitable erasure as time slips through our grasp. We are fortunate not only that the photographer was there to record what was, but that historians exist today to dig through the rubble of time and unearth the forgotten.

Nostalgia: The Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II, Captured in Color Photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (Die Gestalten Verlag) takes us back to the turn of the twentieth century, during the final years before the final days of an empire that spanned several centuries. Prokudin-Gorskii was a pioneer of photography in Russia, and a pioneer in color photography itself. As Dr. Stelle Blasche writes in the book’s introduction, “Very little has been written about his life history. Like so many of the artists and architects of pre-revolutionary Russia, he has been forgotten, leaving a blank space in photography that remains to this day.”

With the publication of Nostalgia, we are treated to a long-overdue retrospective of the artist’s work, a story of so many lives that would be changed forever in a matter of a decade’s time. Prokudin-Gorskii studied chemistry in Russia before traveling to Berlin and Paris to learn about chemistry, photomechanics, and spectral analysis. He returned to Russia in 1901 to study color photography in a country where the medium of photography itself was little known. Driven to compete with the developments in Western Europe and the USA, Prokudin-Gorskii presented his work to the Imperial Technical Society with the aim of garnering financial support for his project. By 1908, he had reached Czar Nicholas II, presenting color projections of photographs that included a portrait of celebrated author Lev Tolstoi.

Read the Full Story at
Le Journal de la Photographie

Library of Congress St. Petersburg. The Castle Bridge across the Neva, and Admiralty Quay, c. 1895. Photochrome. © Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC, Photochrom Prints

S. 206; Michail Bukar, Mordwinen, 1872, © Staatliches Historisches Museum, Moskau

What is the soul? What color is it?

For life is the best thing we have in this existence.
And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within.
This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions
and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.

Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet.
Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech.

The French poet, Rimbaud, predicted that the next great crop of writers would be women.
He was the first guy who ever made a big women’s liberation statement,
saying that when women release themselves from the long servitude of men
they’re really gonna gush. New rhythms, new poetries, new horrors, new beauties.
And I believe in that completely.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon.
In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.
For nothing is more precious than the life force
and may the love of that force guide you as you go.

Where does it all lead? What will become of us?
These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed.
It leads to each other. We become ourselves.

~*~
Quotes by Patti Smith
Artwork by Lady Aiko

kisses are a better fate than wisdom

The three saddest things are the ill wanting to be well,
the poor wanting to be rich, and the constant traveler saying “anywhere but here.”

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us
something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch.
Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight
or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

We can never be born enough.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes sense.

Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.

One’s not half of two; two are halves of one.

I thank you God for most this amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees,
and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite,
which is yes.

~*~

Quotes by e.e. cummings
Photographs by Landon Nordeman

Music in the Age of Mass Reproduction

Archie Shepp, The Magic of Ju-Ju (Impulse), Robert & Barbara Flynn (Design), William E. Levy (Photo), 1967

Twelve by twelve inches. A cardboard slipcase for a twelve-inch album. Vinyl. The way it all began. When turntables were the way music was orchestrated in the era of mass reproduction. And so it was, and it had been, that the photograph was part of that experience, the sleeve being the perfect place upon which to project, a veritable canvas, a movie screen, a silent and simple place for a single image upon which to consider the songs recorded on A and B sides. And once upon a time, not so long ago, the music pressed was a thing to behold unto itself, perhaps the height of the era being the jazz albums that had been produced.

Jazz Covers I and II by Joaquim Paulo with editor Julius Wiedemann (Taschen) Is an impressive compendium, taking us back to the way it was, when you could gaze upon the photograph, the way in which the artist designed to complement the energy of the album, each cover design being a distinct in the way it sets the tone through the visual iconography of the creative director, who integrated the image into a larger frame, using line, text, and form to produce a visual rhythm all its own.

Read the Full Review at
Le Journal de la Photographie

Donald Byrd, A New Perspective (Blue Note), Reid Miles (Design & Photo)

stay makinn boys blushh ~*~

Poem By Someone by Richard Hell

To discover yourself: buy makeup, but reader
to fulfill yourself, say these words:
“My name is Frank Sinatra.”
It’s true, like everything
that’s frightening-a speaker
in the flesh has disintegrated your body.
Horror, after all
is the basic ingredient
of each bite of butter,
Sugar,
each layer of cake,
Honey,
my lamb, illegible

Bozo sucked the scum and only
“Bo…o Tr…phant” remains to be scrutinized
by scholars intent on discovering
how those two words could be equated
with the gray and brown stains on bedsheets
as an expression of love communicated
across an infinite distance.
Reader, darling,
come closer.
Though we must employ the techniques
perfected in the production of endless television commercials,
still,
we can read between the lines, can’t we…
We’re three-dimensional, though, yes, you’re right,
I’ve revealed my insecurity on that point, and
“my” may be too strong a term in this context.

The line of your forearm blurs
and you move it to convince yourself you’re there.
We’ve become so close…
I’ve picked up your habits
…a Spanish accent…
a tendency to ego-disintegrate and passionately

identify with the cockroach one is compelled
to viciously crush on the kitchen floor

identify to the point of suffering with the
cockroach one has just…
identify… crushed to the point of
…identify the cockroach to the point of the…
floor… suffering… uncontrollably on the one
who has just crushed
crumpled
collapsed into a far more desirable object
superior in every way
to the ordinary “sheet of paper” human being…

Yes, we have so much in common
lying on the floor, a chromosome pool,
calculating all the possibilities and invariably
arriving at “I must have left something out,”
as milk flows from your mouth
and starry blood stamps on the accelerator to escape
the fate awaiting it
in your brain cells.
But if we could just hold onto each other, my sweetheart,
at night, inside artificial light,
the position of each object spectacularly
increasing its ominous presence
when the smeared mirror places a
triple white distance in advance of the blue wall and
is not conscious of its effect-
your presence alters these perceptions
when you are in my arms
as I am in your hands
right now.

But when every line exists
to cancel its predecessor,
“He wants to better himself”
is all that remains to be said,
dear.
A think head can be an advantage.
Must stupidity be held against the writer?
Must false modesty?
Must pseudo false modesty?
All I ask is your indulgence
for introducing myself
troduce…
lips…
one’s lips…
Aren’t they eloquent enough stationary?
Must they move?
We’re o the same species
reader…
Could I please offer you mine as a friendly gesture
from another structure?
Consider them yours.

it is always there when you look

White on White on White on White. I didn’t even mean to write any of that, but the words came tumblinn out after I looked—but could not find—a scan of the photograph I’m wanting to write about. So I hear Malevich in my head, Russians chanting in tongues and paint brushes stroking along reminding me of the Invisible Man, but that’s another story, for another time.

This one is begins, last night, speaking two men in from Mexico City, and they’re looking at the photographs on the wall, lined one after another after another in rows, becoming a lyrical poem, an ode, a sonnet of Shakespearean proportions only it’s all in photographs. Still images flickering at eye height. One after another, each like chocolates on a candy box and you think but you don’t know and you feel and you ask so I go, I flow into a reverie, the way it happened to me, it’s like poetry and I’m on stage and I like it like this because it’s natural, I hear the words and I am charged to write or to speak and if I could sang, lawdamercy but no, best I can do is dance .. but thas an aside.

Back to my point of alla this is yes, it was a photograph. I drew pictures in the spaces between the words, stringing along a little song that never spilled its secrets. Felt like it was a trailer, a preview, a fan dance, smoke and mirrors, except at one point i said something or other, and I saw the men draw their collective breaths ~

And oo ahh, success, yes it was mine, I could taste it, and I had forgotten how it had been only it had never been as good as this. Yes so I told them, how I heard the words, “Pull up a chair and sit down” as I felt myself like Alice going through the looking glass and standing at the kitchen door, and it was my moment, but still the story spun gold from my lips and I continued on, never finishing but I circle back to that photograph, and then I turn around, and there it is, right behind me on the wall, punctuating my sentence like an exclamation point.

And it’s this, of course. Of how it shall be, that you cannot see, but it is always there when you look ~*~

beauty is a sign of intelligence

Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting.
The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

You have to do stuff that average people don’t understand
because those are the only good things.

People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live
because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly.

I never fall apart, because I never fall together.

They always say time changes things,
but you actually have to change them yourself.

Photographs by Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen
Quotes by Andy Warhol

.. sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself ..

Brownsville, BK 1980

The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness.
And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.

Red Hook, BK 1980

No human relation gives one possession in another—
every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love,
the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.

Keisha

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.

Brooklyn 1980

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
And think not you can direct the course of love,
if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

Flatbush, BK

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Photographs by Jamel Shabazz
Quotes by Khalil Gibran

Trolley is the Antidote

Daniele Tamagni, ‘Gentlemen of Bacongo’ poster

A month ago I was asked to write a small piece, a tribute to the great Gigi Giannuzzi on the occasion of the forthcoming publication of TROLLEYOLOGY, a ten year retrospective of one of the greatest illustrated book publishing houses to ever exist. I won’t look back, I won’t re-read what I wrote. I shall begin again, speaking from my heart.

Gigi is dead. Long live Gigi. His spirit is eternal. I knew this, as I know so many things that are without words and yet I am charged to find a way to express the ineffable. Gigi is (not was) a force of Nature, a triumph of the will, a prince among men. He walks the earth with the express purpose of bringing light into the dark.

He does this, as only he can. He produces books, book unlike anything the world has seen before. Books that take on some of the most difficult stories to tell, the beautiful dreams and horrific nightmares that cannot be erased when we close our eyes. We cannot and will not look away. Gigi understands the photograph, the heart of the photographer, the witness who bears evidence, proof, and testimony of the ephemeral made eternal. Gigi makes us look. He makes us understand. We are all complicit in the damnation of the world, and we are all charged with its salvation.

Though Gigi has passed from the mortal plane into the spirit world, he is still here and his legacy carries forth, not only in what he has achieved but in how we carry on. And it is here the opportunity arrives to show heart. TROLLEYOLOGY is on Kickstarter. It doesn’t ask for much, just for each one of us to do our part. And what that is, you may discover when you step into a world, a world that lies right outside your door, when you open your eyes and see it anew.

Please Support

Philip Jones Griffiths, Gigi in Venice whilst making the book Agent Orange, 2003

life is predetermined in retrospect

Everything happens according to Law.
Nothing ever “merely happens.”
There is no such thing as Chance.
While there are various planes of Cause and Effect,
the higher dominating the lower planes,
still nothing ever entirely escapes the Law.
—Three Initiates, Kyballion

~ i have wings to fly ~

A Dream Deferred, Bronx, 2011

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to,
and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Little Girl in Wynwood, Miami Art Basel, 2012

Nothing is worth more than laughter.
It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light.

Reflection, Queens, 2011

I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim,
and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.

Guerilla Gardening, Paris, 2011

I paint flowers so they will not die.

Aura, Canada, 2010

I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.

Paintings by Alice Mizrachi
Quotes by Frida Kahlo