all of me

Putting the last piece of a puzzle into place has something of the ritual about it. Programmers who build puzzles for computers realize this and set the puzzle to flash a couple of times when the last piece if successfully put into place. Even when we know that it's the last piece, even when well before then the whole picture is clear to us, that last piece creates a feeling of achievement ... and of wholeness.

But what are we to do when we no longer have that last piece? What do we do with a puzzle that can never again reach that wholeness? (Who would want us to pass it on to him or her?) Sure, we can still put the puzzle together until that last piece, but something is always going to be missing, a feeling of incompleteness, of perhaps emptiness, remains.

For obvious reasons I can't scan the missing pieces of a puzzle. But even when another piece is missing, can we perhaps feel the incompleteness on the other pieces? Does the fact that the puzzle can never be whole again radiate from each piece that remains? Above are two pieces from different puzzles. One piece from one of the puzzles seems to have been irretrievably lost. Does it show? Can the piece from the complete puzzle be identified?


Sometimes the history of a particular toy is lost well before it even gets to us. A wooden puzzle for learning the numbers (that Hila seemed to enjoy though I could never figure out what attracted her to it) arrived by us already missing a piece. From the start it was a strange puzzle - the picture pieces were each the same size, as were the numerals, meaning that it was possible to put the puzzle together without getting the numbers right. Maybe that was the reason the kids seemed to enjoy playing with it. Now that it's ready to be passed on to someone else it seems to be in need of a couple of other pieces which have become misplaced.


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