Category: Photography

Your anguish is a force, a separate soul that cries out for solace and remedy. A thousand words of comfort rise from the ache in my throat, but they cannot restore the beloved person who abandoned you. Into this void, my voice may drop like a stone.

It hurts to see you cry, face in your hands, unable to sleep, eat, or even feel real. Dizzy from the shock of sudden desertion, each second refuses to pass, remains incomplete. Your injured heart has lost its rhythm and your movements seem leaden, as if masses of melted tar are dragging your arms down every time you lift a glass.

While your body slows to glacial time, the brain accelerates as it struggles to comprehend this alien reality that cannot be happening but is happening anyway. Like a never-ending game of tether ball, your thoughts spin faster and faster into smaller and tighter circles, shackled by panic to the iron fact of loss.

If I had the power to heal you, I would gather the softest banana leaves in creation and soak them thoroughly in shea butter. Then I’d wrap them round your head to cool and cradle your brain, drawing out the poison of self-punishing thoughts, soothing the pain, and smoothing the wrinkled loops of endless tormenting questions.

For your heart-wounds, I offer a poultice composed of clay, feathers, and ferns to press against your chest as if in prayer. The heart-poultice cannot mend the cracks, but it honors them with love. When the minerals and soft coverings touch your skin, they ease the hurt, giving you precious minutes of relief.

And for your whole body, a pool has been sunk into the cursèd room that most haunts you with memories. The pool is not very wide — the width of three ordinary bathtubs — but it is fathoms deep. The sides and bottom of the pool are made of peat-black marble, turning the water so dark that it gathers you into oblivion. When you sink into this personal well, the only things you experience are the present sensations of cool healing water, your steady breath, and the kind red beating of your heart.

(Thank you Sean McDermott for making the recording! For a physical or digital copy of Visualizations for Heartbreak, please contact Catherine Raine at cafrinie@yahoo.ca).

Once the reality of betrayal shatters the numbness, your rage awakens molten creativity and revives the blacksmiths and glassblowers of old. Your curses blast the forge and explode in the fire, where they transform into a glowing orb with fierce swirls of crimson, orange, and yellow.

The fiery globe is too hot for human hands to touch, and curious viewers must back away from its dangerous fragility. But when the orb cools, when it settles into itself, thousands will flock to this glass masterpiece, magnetized by its primal beauty.

The rage orb electrifies viewers and powerfully connects them to the anger of our hurting world, for this beautiful object has been forged and burned and spun from the rawest materials on earth: the fury of the wronged and the anguish of the betrayed.

When the orb is tilted at different angles, flashes of violence appear, open wounds that seethe beneath the fragments of a shattered heart. Critics may find your art disturbing or claim it contains glints and flints of revenge, but I say, “No, not traditional revenge or actual violence. Only the satisfaction that comes from refusing to bury pain inside. It takes courage to harness anger’s explosive energy and hurl it into a new form, sowing seeds of fire into grief’s deep furrows.”

Although the orb’s creation has not exorcised anger for good, it has given you some peace. Its presence is a testament to the value of authentic feelings, no matter how uncomfortable, sharp, or bitter. As you navigate this strange land of loss, you bring rage with you, for it is a righteous guide that divines underground springs of truth.

(Thank you Sean McDermott for making the recording! For a physical or digital copy of Visualizations for Heartbreak, please contact Catherine Raine at cafrinie@yahoo.ca).