Plate Five: LOSS

Jack sits in the foreground, at his table. His face is a mask of grief; he clutches his head with both hands as he rests his elbows on the tabletop. Tears flow down his cheeks, and past his cheeks, down his neck, disappearing into the folds of his garment. We see that this is Jack in his natural element, his home. His simple home is visible along all the edges of the plate; a one-room cottage with various items on shelves, and many flower-boxes and plants, which frames essentially a full-plate portrait of Jack. He sits facing outward, but his head is downcast. We see his tears, but not his eyes.

All his potted plants are dead, as are his fields. Jack’s cottage was once home, apparently, to a verdant collection of growing things, now withered and dry. A large pot, probably waist-high on Jack, sits on each side of his open door. Once leafy bushes or vines grew out of these pots and climbed up either side of the doorframe, we may infer from markings and stains on the now-bare wood of the frame. Now the stalks and leafs are two shapeless heaps poured over the pots like syrup on pancakes, spilling over and coating the floor around them. More pots and dead plants stud the shelves that line Jack’s home, smaller but equally dead. Dead flowers fill a flower-box under Jack’s open window, half-visible on the edge of the frame behind Jack. Through the window, and through the open door, Jack’s fields can be seen; they are full of dead gray wheat.

On his table the horn glows. Between us (that is, the surface of the plate) and Jack is again the magical mellophone. It gleams with an internal lamp, but its light does not illuminate the cottage, which is lit entirely by the overcast sky outside. Again, the mellophone gives the impression of having been pasted into the plate after the rest of the artwork was completed. It seems slightly too large for the space it takes up, as if it had been drawn from a slightly different perspective than the rest of the plate. Reflected in its shining surfaces we see reds, and greens, and rich purples, which look all out of place in the muddy gloom of Jack’s cottage.

Spilling across the table, out from beneath the horn is a pile of gemstones. In each gem, a screaming face. The matchless gems range in size (assuming no trick of perspective fools us into thinking them swollen or shrunken) from a pencil’s eraser to a golf ball. They sparkle like rhinestones, reflecting the light of the mellophone onto the tabletop; though the light from the glowing horn does not illuminate the scene directly, the sparkling wealth on Jack’s table reflects and spreads an echo across the tabletop and Jack’s weeping in the foreground. Some gemstones show only a few facets, some show dozens or perhaps hundreds of facets. In every gemstone, whether in the largest facet or distributed in small fragments across many facets, a screaming face can be seen. Some of the faces are male, some female, some young, some old. Most are sexless and ageless, conveying nothing of themselves, save anguish.

Death stands outside the house, waiting. Death is patient; Death has waited long and can afford to wait longer. Death always wins, eventually, and thus Death feels no urge to rush Jack. Here Death is depicted in the traditional manner, as a monk-robed skeleton wielding a scythe. He stands just outside the door, on Jack’s step, half-hidden by the doorframe, but inarguably present.

A motto winds all along the edges of the plate, starting in the upper left corner and working counterclockwise in spidery script. Who do you think you are, that you can tell the difference between good and evil?