I know that my atoms are not mine and that they were forged in stars and scattered across the universe by their deaths. I know that I am a product of bunch of chemical reactions. I know that I will one day die.
I also know that I am more than sum of my parts. That my death, will only be in this body. I will decompose and become apart of everything. I know that my mannerisms will be inherited by those who loved me. Just I have inherited theirs. And I know if there is a afterlife my spirit will live on forever in love and kindness.
But that doesn't make this life any less worth it.
If you sift through and break yourself down to it's smallest parts. What would they actually look like honestly? I think some of us would automatically respond, positively. And insincerely. Not honestly.
I think it would all do us well to better inspect ourselves.
We are empty vessels and the hollow casks. Our spirit is the kindling and love is our fire. Burning blazing brilliant. Most other things are cheap substitutes for the kindling of our fires. They are meager, and fleeting. Dying. Love is eternal. So, so are our spirits.
Decided to make another splice and thought I’d document it. ._.
I'm just gonna talk here for a minute. I've been stuck at home a lot these last few days quarentining. I just have had thoughts I want to share I suppose and when you are single and live alone in the middle of a global pandemic, sometimes it's hard to find an ear. Like seriously TL;DR who wants to be lectured at. So sit with me for a minute or scroll past this I guess. A lot of us are probably familiar with the famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh as an Artist. He was born in 1853 to a middle class family in the Netherlands. He was kinda solemn and quiet. He worked as an art broker for a while in London, and even was a missionary for a time in Belguim. Before becoming a full time painter in France. In his life time he made over 800 Oil Paintings mostly in the last two years he was alive. He wasn't successful as an Artist until after his death. In life he only sold one painting. He was known to struggle with Mental Illness. A Great record of this is in The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. They are available for reading for free through the Van Gogh Museum. This where I'm a lot more familiar with the artist. More as a Writer. There's over six hundred collected letters between him to his siblings, to other impressionist artists at the time or even to critics. Written across three languages, Dutch French and English. Most of the Letters are to his brother Theo van Gogh. In his Letters to Theo he writes with this sense of duty, and calling. Of Urgency. Vincent very often questions his place in the universe, and what he could be doing to better it. If I had time to annotate and write and comment about all 600 letters, I would. There is a lot of meat there to understand him as a person, and by extension an Artist. And when you understand someone else's story better you also sometimes understand your own better too. But I'm just gonna take some selected thoughts here and think alongside him. In April 1878 Vincent writes to Theo pontificating about the proverb "We are Today, what We were Yesterday.", to Segway to my next thought I want to say twelve years later in 1890 Vincent would die by a self-inflected gunshot wound. He was 37 at the time of his suicide. There's this book, "A Grief Observed" by British Author C.S. Lewis which was written in response to his wife's death, American Poet Joy Davidman. Lewis writes "The Pain I feel Now, is the Happiness I had before. That's the Deal" it's published almost a hundred years after Vincent's letter. I wonder if in those last few days of their respective lives if they had thoughts that looked like this often. Where Compassion decays into Despair, or "The Pain we are in Today, is the Happiness we had Yesterday". We can't ever know for certain what thoughts Vincent had on that sad height. But back in that April Letter, I think he finds some peace there. In his closing thoughts he writes "Woe-spiritedness is quite a good thing to have, if only one writes it as two words, woe is in all people, everyone has reason enough for it, but one must also have spirit". Almost all of Vincent's paintings were made in the last two years of his life. Those are the things he left behind. Those are things we inherited. His Woe, but also more importantly his Spirit.
So a while back I heard someone say that we appropriated our ability to speak from God. And whether or not this is true, humor me.
I guess let's start from the beginning. In Genesis, it talks about how there was a formlessness , and God spoke "Let there be..." and suddenly there was things that there were never before. Formlessness Defined by Words Divine. Light, Dark, Land, Sea, Skies, and every living thing from just God's "Let there ..." . And then later in the Gospel John it reads "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." That's how John starts his Gospel, that's how he opens his message that's how important it is. That God is Word. From the very beginning.
So now picture this God creates us, Humans. And we are created in God's Image. So we desperately try to communicate with God, and how do we do that? Feebly, I guess. Because what do we do? Speak. God had just created everything with words.
Now that's Blasphemy. Because would it not be? Blasphemy, is using Words Sacrilegiously. And Sacrilegious is the misuse of anything Sacred. Words are the Tools of Creation. So Words are Sacred. Our Words or Use of Any Speech is Blasphemy!
Now, most of that is me, way over thinking and stretching that to the extremes. But do you see what I mean? Words are powerful. With tact they can sway minds and hearts, and some words are carried across time. They build relationships, people, promises, companies, and nations and according to the bible all of Creation. Words are powerful things, and once dispensed they can't be returned or given back. Just as much they can build and create, they can destroy and take. And that was everything I was trying to convey.
I have actually yet to find rest. My Anxiety causes me much pain and distress like a storm that rages with usurping gales. Swirling, Turning, Tossing, displacing what cannot be lost. Costing me negative gain. It makes me fearful and afraid, like trying to clutch sand, only to have the grains slip out of your hands. I cannot find sleep, because all I feel is deracine. Safety is hard to find out there on the rollings seas. My peace is in some far off Rosy fingered dawn. And security and ease of mind are much more memories. It makes me breathe like no matter how much I intake it will not inflate in my lungs. Like my body would much rather pause on this breath, like it means less than to see the rest of the road. All these worries they share the same name. They are called the same as you.
Not even Poetry within all it's meter and form, within all it's unstructured beauty, can adequately capture you.
Night after Night I lie awake. Eyes closed; Mind spinning with Fractured Verses.
If you ask me if I was made in God's imagine I would adamantly decline. However, if you asked me if she was made with some grander plan or design in mind, I would affirm because that is the opinion of mine.