What does does a person do when the structure supporting one’s life starts to erode?  Is the feeling like a phantom limb? Hard to say, since I have all my physical limbs. I can imagine it being like a psychic limb amputation, however. When my father was alive, we didn’t talk very much. But I visited him when I could and used to call him up when I had philosophical questions about math or physics. After he died, I still had the reflex intention of picking up the phone when I thought of something interesting that he might have liked to hear. There was a hole that existed; the promise of sharing with him and getting to know more about his childhood was never to be fulfilled.

I miss my brother Michael. I must clarify that… I never knew him, I never knew if he knew me, but I missed who he wasn’t: my big brother.  Mike is still living. He is very low functioning, autistic and nonverbal.  The hole in my life attributed to missing the relationship I wished I had with my brother is a different story than sudden loss.  A chronic lack of a needed relationship builds up psychic calluses or other means to compensate. One is never ready for a sudden loss even though one may see it coming and tries to prepare.

Today’s experiment:

My little pen and ink drawing is more like a pictogram with elements, or icons to represent loss.  I would have preferred to have been able to work with pictorial depth – and not that produced by perspective.  If I were fluent with that technique, I would have painted an infinitely deep hole.

Identity Shift
approx. 4″x4″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block