van Gogh, my go-to

 

I went to see Exhausted Paint with my son. It was a fine way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I won’t tell you what I thought of the actual play. That is more something on my end, I admit. But it is impossible for anyone else to sit in my seat, next to my second oldest son on a day when my life is going really well and see the play I was seeing. So there.

I think that you would find more value in what I did do after the play. I went home and found my 30 year old ragged ass paperback copy of Letters to Theo. A book I called in Tripio, the best book on writing I have ever read. Still true. I read about ten pages and found these excepts. Just ten pages.

Is there anything about how to paint? About how to write, even? No. But in them, you can see the paintings.

• I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?
• Admire as much as you can; most people do not admire enough.
• Try to walk as much as you can.
• If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere.
• Autumn is coming fast, and that makes nature more serious and more intimate still.
• Man is not easily content: now he finds things too easy and then again he is not contented enough.
• Work is always a good thing.
• I have been busy today with a great many little nothings, but they belong to my duty; if one had no sense of duty, who would be able to collect his thoughts at all?
• Things that other care for have no attraction for me.
• It is not always easy to fight against distractions, and if I had money it would be worse still.