HORSENECK — B.K. Smith

"I finally detached with the understanding that people cannot give to you what they don't have. I am not feeling the love because... And because of what was probably this unsatisfied need for affection, I have a history of trusting complete strangers, some of whom have, to their credit, risen to the occasion by displaying the kindness thus expected of others at the eleventh hour. I made friends easily. One day, impelled by mutual attraction, or curiosity, you strike up a conversation and discover shared interests and a new friendship is born. You try to live the same hopes and dreams, feeling at ease, even happy, and this friendship becomes part of your life, a little bit like family. Then treachery strikes and a great desolate wind sweeps away those dreams. Wounded and angry, you wish you were dead for ever thinking or believing and falling for it again. 


Then other similar mirages appear on the horizon, as you walk in your own landscape, and you rise to the occasion once again, and you are disappointed once again, and one fine day all that is left of your spirit is a tiny scar on your heart no bigger than a fingernail scratch. You no longer feel anything either. You no longer care. 


Only many years later, only when I had given myself passively to this lovelessness in the conviction that I had metamorphosed from a loveless childhood to the adulthood of more of the same, disappointment, betrayal and loss. Only with this wisdom had I come to believe in nothing, and only then was I surprised by love. 


What is the meaning of ordeal? You'll know it when you know it.


This book contains "Papier Mache Bowls - Vessels of Grieving."

42 full-color photographs,"The creative meaning of ordeal."