It’s often about the simple things, isn’t it? Painting and photography are first about seeing, they say. Writing is about observing. Technique is secondary. Sometimes the simple is the most difficult.

I have stopped painting. I stand in front of the easel, brush in hand, but my mind is blank. It is as if I have been struck by a strange kind of blindness.

My aloneness had never bothered me; I hadn’t even been aware of it. But now it overwhelmed me. The awareness washed over me with painful sharpness and deep grief. Now that I had company.