The End From Where I Was.

Jim Hodges, The end from where you are, 1998. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, restricted gift in memory of John S. Baran with additional restricted support from the Meta S. and Ronald Berger Family Foundation

This is a piece hanging in Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art. As a rule, I appreciate art. I see its beauty, I see the artist's talent, I appreciate its context. There are very few times that I have ever been truly moved by a piece of work, however. This particular piece set off in me a depression I've not yet been able to overcome. It is silk flowers, delicately sewn together, with bits of colored silk strewn throughout. This is what the end is from where I am. What the artist's intent was, I have no way of really knowing. But for me, this was indeed the end from where I was. The end comes, filled with darkness, filled with sadness, filled with the fragility of delicate memories, hopes achieved, failures magnified. So many things have deaths; we lose things daily. For some of us, we die a thousand little deaths each and every waking day. This has been a year of deaths for me. The death of a career, the death of friendships at the place where I worked, the death of faith in myself as a capable adult. This trip was a death, too. Not all deaths are sad. This was the death of pain, suffering and blame I'd carried with me for many years. Mixed with those things were the loss of the love of youth, the ecstasy of insatiable sex, the memories tied to dedications of love that would last a life time. My colored bits; they were a bit sad to see disappear with the rest, but the promise of what the beginning will be from where I am is far brighter. I'd rather have a friend forever, without fear of loss, without fear of abandonment, than the weight I'd clung to for so long.