All the World’s a Stage and we merely players,

We have our entrances and our exits,

And one man in his time plays many parts….

This particular man, at this particular time, plays the contemplative, photo journalist.  He sits in his windowless yet creative space, an old 1950’s bank vault, which smells of nostalgia and incense, searching for the perfect image to compliment the pages of the  magazine.  Editing and narrowing down the photograph that sells the homegrown-local stories of neighborhood bravery with the most fervor and the most interest.  He stares at the images upon his laptop that jump right off the screen against a teal blue wall behind it.  There is no mistake in that foil between the sometimes somber, cynical nature of his work and the colorful backsplash.  He needs it like his lips need the caress of a woman’s bosom.  There is both a deliberateness in his work and meditations but also a fierce longing, a calling, a deep desire to pursue each story like a cheetah hunting its prey.  To be an intimate witness to each slice of life and at least for a while, weave a cozy dance of discourse with life’s dangerous and melancholic truths.

He takes a drag from his modern-day vapor pipe to satisfy his addiction, calm his nerves and exhales a stream of billowing steam.  It fills his immediate surroundings, clouds his view but not his thinking.  He rests in this modern neoteric film noir scene; for the time being, it is where he feels most comfortable and safe.  If we were to see this moody picture on the screen we could easily imagine it in black and white however past the vibrant teal blue wall, into the next room from his office, rests a luring, green, velvet, worn-in couch.  It acts as the catalyst for his arousals.  He allows his mind to drift into his fantasy life to remove him from the side of his work that is sinister and grim.  Images flash before him, one after the other, with each click of his fingers against the base of his laptop.  It creates a numbing montage before his eyes… until he comes to one image of her…. 

She is petite but fierce.  Long sandy blond hair like a lions mane, that suits the juxtaposition between her grace and wild yet splendid heart.  Her fitted-sleek-black dress plunges at the neckline and reveals her soft, fleshy bust that he envisions losing himself in.  Her eyes reveal the depth of her soul which are both reassuring and treacherous, but treachery calls his name and he craves its familiarity like a distant but friendly stirring.  To live his life on a razors edge with its sharpness and possibility for laceration is his axis.  To find refuge between the antithesis of melancholy and reason is where he rests his head, and shakes his soul and rings out the history of his inner narrative.  He closes his eyes once more and drifts.  He vacillates from a soft loving caress of her skin to a firm gripping pull of her waist with his masculine hands.  She embodies his desire and so we come to the phase of the lover… 

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

Another drag of nicotine, another sip of 12 year aged scotch, a sigh, another long stare at her image, another click, a visiting of old love affairs in his mind… and a knock at the door.  It is her, she is there.  And life goes on…