First-edition-of-the-New-Year greetings, collector friends! As with last year's bridge-burning final edition from Mike Monteiro, today's edition by Wendy MacNaughton would be excellent fuel for any new year's resolve that involves fortifying oneself against future-tripping and/or past-dwelling. The instinct to, as Ram Das famously said, Be Here Now is a noble one. While it's not very zen of me to say so, experience has proven that instinct is infinitely easier to pursue if you happen to love the one you're with, in the now. Our second edition by Wendy, The Universe and Forever, confirms a sneaking suspicion that I'm not alone in feeling this way.

The affinity I've developed for Wendy's work over the last few months has a lot in common with what I find so satisfying and comforting about Joe Holmes' depictions of NYC. I realize this might seem like kind-of a head-scratcher, but bear with me. I often speak about how Joe is capturing our adored city in a loving embrace that's equal to my own—knowing that he is always looking reminds me to keep looking. And, I derive a certain comfort in knowing he's likely to discover and preserve some quintessentially New York tableau that I might of overlooked and definitely wouldn't have been able to photograph as he had.

In Wendy, I've found someone who seems to navigate the terrain of emotions and experience in a way that's reassuring in its familiarity. And, much like I'm not so hot at picture-taking—a fact woefully evident to me this morning as I reviewed my unfortunate attempts at preserving my Hawaii vacation for posterity—I'm also not so hot at talking about my feelings. And when pressed upon to do so, I'm utterly incapable of brevity. (You're shocked, I know.) Conveniently enough, my consuming obsession with making this whole art-for-everyone thing a reality has managed to crowd out my personal life, leaving little time for having feelings, much less for discussing them.

A rather sudden change—Things Happen, doncha know—has me feeling feelings, kind of schmoopy ones even, and (gulp) talking about them too. It turns out it's not so bad; in fact, I'm kinda into it. So far, so good—I give myself an A for effort, but a "needs improvement" for precision and brevity. Fortunately for me, today's edition from Wendy can fill in while I try to catch myself up.