Hyphen therapy

Was today and went alright.  Sometimes I think it is better with tears and there were none today.  No real catharsis.  Talked about Patricia and her intrusions in my life and reconnected it to my mother, both of whom isolated themselves for whatever reasons.  Below is the last photo I have of my parents together, drinking, of course.  I think my mother looks like hell here.  Ravages of  time and drink.  She died just two months shy of her 60th birthday.  Dad looks like dad, the yarmulke helps cover his bald head very nicely.  I suspect this was at a cousin's wedding or bar mitzvah that I didn't attend.  I avoided going home for functions and visits because they never went well.  I would start to hyperventilate around Novi and it got worse the closer we got.  When I first saw this photo I was embarrassed by the way mother looked.  Alright, students, compare and contrast the ravages of time and drink.  Only 59 in the second photo.  Hyphen, are you looking?


I think it is part of my therapy now to do illustrations like this.  This is cathartic.  Like Ozymandias by Shelley...look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair..  I despair because of the wreck of a life.  And I, too, was following that path, drinking myself out of graduate school.  Finally quit drinking in 1997.  I had an epiphany...if I kept drinking I was going to kill myself.  Literally.  Not to say I don't miss the occasional beer or glass of wine, but it would kill me to drink again.

And, trust me, I was sweating out my 59th year.  I had to make it to. 60.  Not go down in flames like mother.  You know what bothered my mother most about me?  I think it was my bushy eyebrows.  She constantly made me pluck and trim them.  That was the first thing I quit doing after she died.  She compared them to the labor leader John L. Lewis.  Samuel Gompers maybe but not Lewis.

This concludes the therapy session for,the day.  Almost time for the mandolin lesson and then a chat with Kathie and dinner about 9:00...how European , eh?

Look upon my works....