On and off, for almost ten years I was with the woman I considered to be my soul mate. The last time we were together I had considered it to be the happiest time of my life. I was utterly and completely and madly in love. She loved yoga and was becoming very serious about meditation. She had decided to attend a Buddhist retreat called vipassana which was a ten day vegan meditation camp where she would meditate eight hours a day would not even speak the entire time. Before she went I decided to read the biography of Gotama Buddha and learn a little about the philosophy. I was troubled by its denial of earthly attachments and began to fear I might somehow lose her. She assured me my fears were unfounded and off she went to vipassana and then to her sister's place in Brooklyn for a short stay after the retreat. I was speaking to her on my cell phone right up to the moment she drove through the gate.

While she was gone I missed her and I worried. I even did a painting of her meditating in a Buddhist like pose. The tenth day passed and I waited for her to call. I knew she was going to her sister's and I did not want to intrude. The second day passed. On a third day I finally called her in New York and she answered her phone. She seemed as emotionally remote from me as she was geographically. When I told her I loved her she said nothing. I knew at that point that this person was not my soul mate and my heart broke.

When she got back home she went on and on how it was the happiest time of her life and how she could not wait to go back the following summer. She did not even want to be with me physically for the first two weeks she was back. And even though she again became the woman I loved within a few months; my heart had began to turn. I was still completely in love with her, but I was also beginning to hate her at the same time. Not returning my love and being told the happiest moments of her life were ones that I was not a part of tore me to pieces. We stayed together for almost a year after that. I could not let her go. But I could not stop my heart from continuing to turn. In the end I no longer even liked the way she smelled.

This painting is based on Edgar Allen Poe's poem "The Raven." I find it fitting that I had stretched the canvas overtop an old bed frame; even before I knew what I was going to paint.