Diamonds don't understand roses

Love too much to lose

St. Etienne by Jurg Roessen

Sweet & tender surrender

Beauty without

Sapphire promises

Liquid eyes

Back to bed

Shout out - NIC

Shout out to Nicaragua. Thank you for reading my blog. 

Paolo Sebastian

Night cuts

Velvet crush, black midnight the crash, the wreckage of a million pieces of glitter flung throughout the heavens.
Arranged by chance, haphazard by design, glorious in their misplaced, mistaken tome.
Hazy shades looked down as honor and innocence were raped ugly.
Broken dreams lay littered perfectly across the dark abyss of night.
My night, you are my cover against the fear, you wrap me up against the unforgiving light of day.
You keep me safe & warm, bundled inside the cocoon of our forgetfulness.
Here we need not recall the pain.
Here we need not recount the horrors.
Abuses fizzle out like stars in the morning, mere pinpricks of light dissolving in the sanguine peach glow.
Vaulted spires edged out by dawn. I fly into your embrace, harbored, settled against the cruelty of memory.
Minuscule my hearts desires seem, molecules stacked throughout the universe.
Stay with me a while and help me close the past away.
Help me forget the weight of history.
Shake the torture of those nightmares. Fold into bed tonight.



~S.M.
Jan '13

A day away

I need you to understand me. 

I need you to know what cuts me the deepest. 

I need you to keep from cutting. 

I'll love you forever - that's my promise

Visions don't lie.

True love you

Find a beautiful place

We land on our feet

Valentino heels

Come in, Go away

Via  UNCOMMON GOODS
Come in, Go away anagram doormat

Shout out - ISL

Shout out to Iceland.
Thank you for reading :-)

Ritz Paris, Vogue

Vogue, Ritz Paris, 1999. Audrey Marnay in Christian Dior Haute Couture dress and gloves. Pig Mask by Stephen Jones.

Grace Kelly

Color inspiration: Pink Champagne

Emma Leonard

Artist retains all rights. 

Chanel makeup

Paris Changing

Paris Changing: Revisiting Eugene Atget's Paris

By Christopher Rauschenberg

Between 1888 and 1927 Eugne Atget meticulously photographed Paris and its environs, capturing in thousands of photographs the city's parks, streets, and buildings as well as its diverse inhabitants. His images preserved the vanishing architecture of the ancien rgime as Paris grew into a modern capital and established Atget as one of the twentieth century's greatest and most revered photographers.

Christopher Rauschenberg spent a year in the late '90s revisiting and rephotographing many of Atget's same locations. Paris Changing features seventy-four pairs of images beautifully reproduced in duotone. By meticulously replicating the emotional as well as aesthetic qualities of Atget's images, Rauschenberg vividly captures both the changes the city has undergone and its enduring beauty. His work is both an homage to his predecessor and an artistic study of Paris in its own right. Each site is indicated on a map of the city, inviting readers to follow in the steps of Atget and Rauschenberg themselves. Essays by Clark Worswick and Alison Nordstrom give insight into Atget's life and situate Rauschenberg's work in the context of other rephotography projects. The book concludes with an epilogue by Rosamond Bernier as well as a portfolioof other images of contemporary Paris by Rauschenberg. If a trip to the city of lights is not in your immediate future, this luscious portrait of Paris then and now is definitely the next best thing.

Is it kind?

Is it kind to smash a soul?

Has he given me a gift?

Perhaps the numbness will provide the escape I have been needing. 

Terribly flawed

We are all terribly flawed
& you never stop paying for some mistakes
& these days giving your whole heart to someone doesn't seem to be enough

Nepenthe - Eleven, Twenty-two, O'Nine

Nepenthe Sweet, seductive, beguiling - Like a wisp of smoke intolerably strong, holding me in bondage I tend to forget to ground myself. I want to move beyond bitterness, distrust, and insignificance. Respect & decisions made… I want to know that perfect feeling again. He stirs it in me – couldn’t explain it if you asked me to black cords and blue flannel has my head in a daze Hazel-brown eyes have warped my brain. Same windows… same windows... My heavy sigh Silent reflection Reflections break my heart The two most beautiful angels These children: Gorgeous beyond words Incompatibility breeding destruction The capacity, the potential To break To be washed away And fall apart Eyes blurring out Ripped apart my consciousness My struggle I crumble under my own weight Emerson, my love, my self-reliance A muddy, contaminated place A place where it’s hard for me to catch my breath sometimes No guiding light & a haze covers all features of the landscape here Depression devouring my core Some kind of eerie semblance somewhere Cynical Dark Sad Lone Empty Pain without boundaries Framework of self-criticism There was something about you I couldn’t put away Crushing carelessness – my smudge A place of madness A place without tenderness A place that whispers desperation, My longing so intense It just cuts It eats at me No soulful emergence from the edge Just maintenance There’s so much in me… I turned to dust My anguish came from the massive deficit of an empty heart Such a good man Such an amazing person Things he thinks he hides, I see in his eyes I feel in his touch, I hear in his voice He will not convince me otherwise He will not convince me I didn’t feel what I felt. I can’t bear his heart for him. I can’t let it crush me Rose mouthed beauty beaten black Lost under stone It doesn’t try to be beautiful, it tries to be true Delivered hope quite unexpectedly on my doorstep, where I didn’t want it frankly. I set about through all the motions, all the while wrought with blind obedience to my delusions. Suffocated by intense denial Too soft too ridiculous, too much a mess, too crazy, too emotional too much to handle & I’m probably all of those things But I want him to see the best in me Instead I feel like he doesn’t see me at all – Crushing desire My heart, my biggest weakness in his eyes I sold myself a dream Amalgamation of dreams Lack of empathy for myself Becoming the topographer of this wasteland It was as if nothing outside of his arms mattered… the world faded away, & all that was left was him & me. I never let anyone hold me ... not like that makes me feel unlike any other man I’ve ever been with. He just makes me feel like if the world were falling down around us if I was in his arms somehow the walls would crash around us & the ceiling might give way, but somehow, incredibly in his arms I’d be safe. That feeling is rare. It’s everything. He places his hand on the small of my back & runs it over my body. Skin to skin… I felt accepted. I felt cared for. I felt valued. I felt beautiful. I felt worthy. I felt like I mattered. And I really mattered to him. & he wanted me happy & he wanted me content & he wanted to please me & in that bed with him is the most honest I have felt with anyone in a long, long time. I felt like all the pretenses were dropped & he sank into himself & he allowed himself to feel something for me. I do not have the ability to hold onto that with him. I want to live in that moment with him. I want to be there all the time. That place was beautiful… perfect. His touch melts me. He has no idea. No idea. His lips… everything. Empty words and empty actions so tender with me, so gentle, so generous, so giving, so pleasant… Jagged glass, twisted mirrors Slender slivers Tender familiar quiver I try to trick myself into believing I’m the exception Not a fraud A heart that shines like that – forgive me, but that's just not the truth the way I see it You don’t see the best in yourself Shut the door Lock it, turn the key And walk away It never was It never could be Spiritual exhaustion which afflicted us Chills and fever Deep profound longing Sweet delicacy Liquid exploring its way down my throat, I’m flushed about this man Why does he still grab me like this? This fragment of my reality then, This fragment of my mind cannot be rewritten He remains indelible on my psyche And he has no idea the power he holds over me He’s just there, very close, very far away. So damned hard, so utterly painful Anguished ugly My fantasy has a firm grip on me I can’t scratch & claw & fight my way out of it Stuck in this shard of my mind – shadow mostly There’s no hope for me I can’t pull myself out of this feeling I have for him Something is haywire in my brain & I just fundamentally cannot extricate him from my system He is under my skin, He’s in me… deeply ~S.I.M. 11/22/09

The Book of Counted Sorrows, Revisited

Dare we linger, dare we skate?
Dare we laugh or celebrate,
knowing we may strain the ice?
Preserve the ice at any price?

~The Book of Counted Sorrows

One, One, Thirteen

Artist unknown; credit unknown. 

Message me if you know. 

Fresh start 2013

We are all damaged in our own ways. 

But we need to be tender with one another. 

Link to QUOTES.