"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." - Thomas Merton For some strange reason, this image took several days to render (most of my images take between 1 - 4 hours). There are only 260 objects, all of which are simple metaballs, sphere & tori & none of the materials are complex. I rebooted my pc partway through the process to eliminate the possibility that memory fragmentation or interference with other processes might be a factor. The only thing I could come up with that might account for the long render time is that there are many overlapping objects (mostly metaballs) which occupy the same space & might have caused the rendering algorithms to bog down. Not quite sure if it was worth the wait, but I wasn't willing to give up on it... I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank whoever nominated me for Artist of the Month this month - it was a surprise & an honor. And congratulations to the other nominees & whoever ends up winning...