By Liz Langley, Orlando Weekly
Posted on January 3, 2009, Printed on January 3, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/116866/
When I saw the face in the blood, everything froze for a moment. The blood was everywhere -- puddled and smeared, vivid and viscous, red and black on the floor and brown on the bathtub, where someone who couldn't go on anymore had ended their anguish. One cannot help but imagine it: the despair, the decision, the penetration, the shock at the force with which one's own blood can flow, the weakening, the collapse and finally the fall, the face coming to rest, hopefully with some gentleness, on the lip of the tub to die.
I didn't see the face in the photo at first. It had to be pointed out to me, like Dalí's "Slave Market With the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire," the optical-illusion painting in which you see two women and then someone points out, "No, it's a face, see it?" and then the face is all you can see. This ghostly imprint, left when the body was lifted away from the tub, is now all I can see in this photo. It's disturbing on a primal level, evoking the quiet knowledge that anyone can succumb to hopelessness. Despair is so heartlessly democratic. I feel sure it's the most haunting face I'll ever see.
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