Tonight ... tonight, I sure needed this.

Needed Ekattrina's set, needed Ekattrina ... Needed to "connect" with someone like her. Never guessing it, just knowing something was lacking. You know...?

Rainy night. Streets slick and whiny with wheels slishing outside my window. Just got home a bit ago from a party of people that looked like "death warmed over," you know...? People who acted like they were just going through the motions, people who acted ... Yes, people who *acted*. The faces and smiles they put on looked so false, like replications of faces they'd seen and thought they could get away with looking that way & tricking people into thinking they were sincere.

Well, it *was* a party where people were looking for people to impress, to make good connections with. I left early, slipped out. That kind of connection I can do without. And I knew I'd be of no help.

So when I came home & logged on to your site, little did I expect to see someone with a smile so... so... rewarding, renewing, rejuvenating as Ekattrina's. Her unusually easy invitation of a smile, so accepting and without guile, without tease, only just an acceptance -- a willingness and pleasure at some inner thoughts playing across her eyes. The positions of her hands so unself-conscious and graceful, the slight tilting of her head. As if she were listening to me ramble ... Like I am right now.

Her easy playfulness, no sense of "posing" but just an expression of her moods on what seems a spring day... her sensual taste in her body's expression. So beautiful I had to stop and realize that, even on a crazy computer screen, I'm feeling more *connection* with her smile than I've felt with a living being in hours. Maybe days. (I know ... I've got to get a better life. Looking in all the wrong places ...) But the grace of Ekattrina's smile has brought a lump to my throat, even so.

I wasn't aware how much I am missing spring. Yes, I'm sure that's part of it ... But really, Ekattrina is so much the essence of spring I needn't worry. She is a maid like the flowers, in bloom. Not pretentiously, not on display (like those people I entertained at the party), not currying anyone's favor. Ekattrina knows the camera is not going to betray her, and yet that it is at the same time giving her an entre into a world she has no way of knowing the outcome to. Mikhail Paramonov has really outdone himself this time; what a combination he and the model make: so understated, yet so honest and with a sense of trueness that here I am, layers of crusty hopelessness & my defenses against cynicism sloughing off like melting snow in bright sun. I can even smell her skin, hear those slim trees bending as she moves.

That bright forest, that bright smile, those unforgettable eyes ... so assured and smiling even in their untold depths ... The camera "snapped" them together, trapping them in time and then sent them on the internet to the universe, all unknowing, all trusting. My eyes, at least, are where they've landed, caught for a moment. And it's the only thing I can do, to smile back ... at her image, at you, through you, through the camera's small end of a telescope knowing it's certainly diminished in time & space but nonetheless hoping something like gratitude finds its way to her heart. Who knows but a thought like this might warm her heart somehow ...

Who knows where her smile has ended, whether she smiles that way today... I only know that her smile in that brightly lit forest has brought a measure of spring's eternal hopes into this long winter night. She, Ekattrina, and Mikhail, and you, Eolake, have all given me something subtle, sure, but don't ever forget that it is enduring. I'm sure I'm way too old to ever have a woman look at me that way ever again in my life, except here ... But at least I have "here." At least I now "have" Ekattrina ....

Namaste -David