Arias is the angel of sweet smelling herbs (though, also considered a demon in some sects of occultism, as outlined by Voltaire in Dictionnaire Infernal and Gustav Davidson in A Dictionary of Angels).

Knowing that, it is probably no surprise that I named this photograph as I did; however, there is more depth beneath that reflective surface.

Jane Evelyn Atwood is a personal favourite of mine in the art of documentary portraiture. She would be involved with her subjects for a long time (half a year to years) in order to properly capture exactly who the person(s) was/were. Her website can be found at http://www.janeevelynatwood.com/. Her works have helped the blind (for which she won a prestigious award), refugees, women in prison, and other individuals and groups in abounding numbers.

This photograph is of a close friend of mine, Paige Miller, who is an earth-grown hippie child if there ever was one. Although she does not always have the foresight she wished or thought she had (everyone still loves you Paige; you're like Pandora without the epidemic and tragedy), she makes up for this with her benevolence. She is submissive to those around her because she wants to help them, wants to assist them, and simply waits to be asked or told what to do. Her down-turned eyes display her submissiveness and humility; but, she is happy as she is, and would not be any other way if the world burdened her in solidarity to do so, for she knows this is the way to be to help things live, not help them die. Thus, she smiles as she submits and shows us humility need not be a painful experience wrought with suffering and envy. She knows she is part of the greater system of the Earth, and the only legacy is its continued existence. The red of her shirt adds just a few strokes of colour, and reminds us of the flesh beneath the skin, while the plants in the background and the ghostlike appearance of Arias tie everything into the greater Carbon Cycle.

I had wanted to take her picture for some time before this, but had always held off because there was just nothing around her that matched her the way I wanted (when I had a camera with me). That is, until I thought about it while she was wandering and pondering a garden with me and her boyfriend of 5 years, one of my best friends, Josh Holmes (hilariously clumsy in all things). I wanted to blend her into everything: the light, the shadow, the leaves, and the flowers.

We are, at the smallest level, a contained system of atomic energy. Our neural impulses are merely electrical pulses sent through neurons -- some coated with a myelin sheath for extra speed (the muscle nerves) and some without (the grey matter and inner brain nerves) -- by the stimulation of active sodium ion pores and the flooding of the neuron with negatively charged sodium ions. When the current reaches the end of the axon, the final pore is activated to pump a positively charged calcium ion (Ca2+ or some other sort of neurotransmitter) into the neuron, which causes the release of neurotransmitters being contained within a vacuole in the neuron through the cellular membrane, a process called exocytosis. These transmitters travel across the synaptic gap on carriers and activate the axon of the next neuron. They do so by their chemical structure, much in the same way as we smell, or the way seeing a person's face will cause one to recall their name (as long as its been previously recorded in memory). When the neurotransmitters have done their job, they are broken down by enzymes and recycled back into the originating neuron. In fact, everything thus described in the procedure happens at the molecular level, and is caused by the presence of a specific charge, ion, or molecular structure. The structure is a key that matches a receptor site on the dendrites of the neighbouring neuron (drugs are just impostors on this receptor site, chemicals with the same molecular structure, or similar enough; others pretend to be carriers and keep the neuron firing by never returning the neurotransmitter; and, there are other drugs with other methods of messing with the mind). Thus, when it comes down to it, our thoughts are simply the transmission of electrical signals, of energy, between molecules and atoms and ions. These molecules are parts of hundreds of systems that serve a larger system, which is itself a sub-system of an even greater system, and so on and so forth. Eventually, the workings of just a few molecules are the mechanics of the system that regulates the entire Earth. The world does not belong to man; we are part of the earth, like the organelles of a cell. The organelles are small systems in themselves, but they serve the cell as a whole. The cell, the most basic life form, in multitudes of trillions and trillions, function within all the levels of systems combining to form a human. The people, or, more generally, the animals, and the plants, and the rocks and soil, all life and non-life are part of one goliath cell, the Earth. Nevertheless, the Earth is just a spinning electron in the orbit of a large proton (the sun), a molecule that is part of the greater system of our Milky Way galaxy, which is but a spinning particle lost in the vastness of the universe waiting to collide with another galaxy, implode with the rest of the universe, or do something no one has yet conceived.

For more general information on the Carbon Cycle, as well as detailed pictures and equally in-depth explanations of the nature, impacts, and modern problems with the Cycle, visit http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/CarbonCycle/.

For more information on the neuron's structure, function, types, and abilities, visit http://science.howstuffworks.com/brain1.htm and scroll through the available topics in the "Table of Contents" window in the upper center of the screen.

For more information on the universe, its origins, projected futures, and current systems and subsystems, visit Stephen Hawking own lectures online at http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/lindex.html. This site has lectures directed at both the general public, and at the more deeply educated and advanced astronomy enthusiast that are geared at the university level.