Thewritingchild

My Mom does this thing where, when she turns on a movie it's like she is watching it for the first time, Everytime. Some of her favorites include, Titanic, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor. And for a long time growing up, I didn't really understand it, until a couple of years ago when I listened to Anaïs Mitchell's "Hadestown". It's about that old myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where upon his wife's death Orpheus goes down to the depths of hell, to bargain for his wife's life and he does so successfully. Only to end up loosing her again. It's a tragedy. But one of my favorite tales, I could hear again and again. Which is funny, because in one of the songs the narrator comments on that. "Cause here’s the thing. To know how it ends. And still begin to sing it again. As if it might turn out (different) this time". I think it's just so Human. Hoping against all odds, hoping for change, even when we know the story ends. We keep hoping, even so. We sing the song again. We hope again.

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.

Who knew feelings were this hard to understand, sort and satisfy.

That woman in the photo is my Mother and that child is me. As you can see I am momma's son. I share her eyes, her hair, and her sense of humor. If you have ever laughed with me. You have laughed with her too. She is the presence who has always had my back. Even if she did not always agree. My Mother. Who had me at 13. Her life barely beginning , already committed to loving someone as small as me. I was a premature baby, very tiny. She was my first best friend, who probably cried more than I did on my first day of school. She wasn't able to finish her schooling but she went back and got her G.E.D. so no one could ever say to her "You Failed, You Didn't Succeed" she set her kids up with a model, and something to try to achieve. They say the love between Mother and Child is sacred, being known and loved by her I'd have to agree. There is no sacrament I could give to her that wouldn't be trinkets compared to what she gave to me. My Mother, who held me and called me precious. She, herself, however is something I will always treasure. Thank you, Mom. I love you dearly.

You are the kind of person you are.

It is unprofitable for the Jew to look at histories heros and philosophers without skipping a little. They are are apt to see to only monsters. I suspect that if you were to examine any of these men carefully you are to find he is a soul in no torment. But a coin with two sides who can cash in on his virtues and his evils at seperate counters.

Prejudice is a symptom that can thrive in the most enlightened of minds, as it can in the darkened thoughts of fools.

And now I am foreigner in this Country, always even if I am an American Citizen.

If you have a larger heart, your capacity to understand is bigger.

We usually scorn people who we do not know, once we know them we like them, maybe even love them. You should be large enough to take in all nationalities.

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.

I think often how we overuse words. And how because of that, words that had potency and weight, sometimes now feel trite or even almost empty, half spoken without conviction. "Beautiful" it's almost as trite and vague as it comes now, it's lost it's meaning. There is no singular word that I can give to you to describe her radiance adequately. There is no word to define the way my heart rushed when her skin touched mine. I thought my heart would never be still again. It may have settled but my feelings sure haven't. It's still racing trying to find some sort of definition. It is like a gnat trying to quantify and calculate the breadth width and height of a mountain or some sort of decimal trying to comprehend all of creation.

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.

The artist is so real for making this

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.