<p><em>"Difficult Beauty: Rambles, Rants and Intimate Conversations"</em> by fine artist and writer&nbsp;Lauren&nbsp;Crux, pairs 66 full-color images from Lauren's long standing photography practice with her frank musings that initially started as a mail art project. A book that offers the reader bits of daily life, in which little things go vast. A visual and contemplative balm to the spirit: for who in these times cannot use a bit of comfort, intelligence, and good humor? "The rambles balance intimacy with openness, artistry with colloquial thought and speech.&nbsp;Crux's gaze is simultaneous vast and minute (which I am coming, I think, to understand, is the way of the soul of&nbsp;Lauren&nbsp;Crux). Just when we think we've come on a silly throw away line, or a cliché, or a normal point of view, she turns the phrase and raise the stakes on us. But she's not showing off. She's just talking to us." -Camille Dungy, author of <em>"Soil: the Story of a Black Mother's Garden"</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>"Guidebook to Relative Strangers"</em></p><p><em><span></span></em></p>