Those Vincent Moments

This is me with Eddy, who I befriended in Pai when I was there for a few weeks last year. He was a very colourful character.


The path is narrow, therefore we must be careful. You know how others have arrived where we want to go, let us take that simple road too.

Ora et Labora, [Pray and work] let us do our daily work, whatever the hand finds to do, with all our strength and let us believe that God will give good gifts, a part that will not be taken away, to those who ask Him for it.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new!” [2 Cor. v.17.]

Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
Paris, 25 September 1875

Too many beautiful things have been done too unusually well for me to prefer one to the other systematically. And the changes which the moderns have made in art are not always for the better; not everything means progress - neither in the works nor in the artists themselves - and often it seems to me that many lose sight of the origin and the goal, or in other words, they do not stick to the point.

Your description of that night effect again struck me as very beautiful. It looks very different here today, but beautiful in its own way, for instance, the grounds near the Rhine railway station: in the foreground, the cinder path with the poplars, which are beginning to lose their leaves; then the ditch full of duckweed, with a high bank covered with faded grass and rushes; then the grey or brown-gray soil of spaded potato fields, or plots planted with greenish purple-red cabbage, here and there the very fresh green of newly sprouted autumn weeds above which rise bean stalks with faded stems and the reddish or green or black bean pods; behind this stretch of ground, the red-rusted or black rails in yellow sand; here and there stacks of old timber - heaps of coal - discarded railway carriages; higher up to the right, a few roofs and the freight depot - to the left a far-reaching view of the damp green meadows, shut off far away at the horizon by a greyish streak, in which one can still distinguish trees, red roofs and black factory chimneys. Above it, a somewhat yellowish yet grey sky, very chilly and wintry, hanging low; there are occasional bursts of rain, and many hungry crows are flying around. Still, a great deal of light falls on everything; It shows even more when a few little figures in blue or white smocks move over the ground, so that shoulders and heads catch the light.

Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
The Hague, c. 10 October 1882


How cruel had been those insights; the long, gentle afternoons when I sat on the back veranda of our large, character-filled share house in Adelaide, in love in every possible sense; with the shape of the magnificent gums against the sky, the mysteries of the creek at the bottom of the property, the stale, difficult old man who lived in the granny flat in the back garden; not Eddy but the name springs to mind; we, the students in the front house, fascinated by the call girl who came every Saturday afternoon. I can still remember the day when he tried to get me to look at porn with him. Those sort of things were always happening to me, even at this time, when I was in my early 20s; experiencing some sort of love rather than exploitation for the first time and far from interested in the chaotic interactions which had dominated my life. Here, once gain, we were fleeing the cyclone of Sydney; the physical wreckage I had created from the times when we knew our own answers; a time when our young love was pure and every friendship an adventure; a time before the stifling sadness of middle age had settled in and I knew what I wanted; excited to be.

I sat on that veranda and read Vincent van Gogh's letters; all of them, the three volume set; he was as good a writer as he was a painter; marvelled at the drawings I had never seen scattered through the letters; smoked joints, read the messages to Theo, watched the high gums settle into night; the arrival of the raucous cockatoos each evening; and here, these moments that transcended all other moments, the ones where we knew fully our own doomed artistic journey, where we sacrificed ourselves for art and could have known no other way, when the tortured artist was the sole identity that made all the misery and suffering worthwhile; those tasnscluscent, transcendent moments when consciousness was unconfined, when we weren't some frightened thing behind the shields but another, more triumphant creature all together. It was these rare moments, when I could feel the whole aching beauty of the world, every drop of water, every muffled domestic thought, within a kilometre radius. When I left my body and flew across the neighbouring suburbs. And nothing was going to stop me. Our destiny was great.

But these moments were rare; and involved much torment to get there. I can remember most clearly the most miserable of moments; living with the kids and their mother next to a railway line; after we had lost our house and the money - of which there had been quite a bit by our standards - had entirely gone. The binges had always ended badly, but as I got older they ended even worse; a cruel and disconsolate longing for an ordinary life; that crumby run down house by the railway line; where I churned out hundreds of pages of angst now moldering at the bottom of a box; and I could hear everything in that neighbourhood, see the night cats perched on terrace roofs; see the people sleeping and almost hear their dreams; hear the trains that regularly shattered the place in my aching loneliness, sadder than I had ever been. There had to be a way out of the chaos we had created: here at the end of the binge. But I couldn't think of anything, full of tears; sad at my own complete and total failure; the drug fueled rampage burnt out, leaving nothing but wreckage. And my dearly beloved children asleep; those two angels I had never wanted to hurt.

In the end it was them that led me away from the death march; because they didn't deserve the chaos we had inflicted on ourselves. We were surrounded by narking little pedants and cruel diseases; we could hear everything, the trains coupling at the nearby station, the shouts of the station master, the stirring of the early risers. I wanted so much to be happy. I wanted just to be an ordinary person. I didn't care about writing anymore; it had come to nought. I didn't care about journalism, it was just another job. I cared about those kids I had been put on the earth to protect; and thus it was that I found myself seeking help; away from the acid trails and the ancient melancholy; away from the crushing despair which had gained supremacy, into a different era where he no longer drank and his clothes no longer hung off him with heavy, alcoholic sweat. Away from the cruel times which had been his lot; onto an entirely different path. Halleluyah, salute the brave! We rise up, we conquer the average day, we became, for once in our lives, normal; skating out from under the tidal wave of dereliction that had been about to engulf us; me and my family, sheltering in the alcove, watcing the powerful, dangerous black wave rush by.


THE BIGGER STORY:

I predict nothing but trouble:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23124056-661,00.html

THE Rudd Government has taken legal advice on possible financial claims arising from its planned apology to stolen generation Aborigines.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said yesterday she wanted the proposed apology to be above politics.

But this seemed unlikely: Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson declared the new Government's priorities should be hip-pocket issues such as petrol prices and interest rates.

The apology is expected to be the Government's first formal action when the new Parliament sits on February 12.

But indigenous groups plan to crash Mr Rudd's apology with a mass protest over his refusal to offer compensation.

Ms Macklin said an apology was imminent.

"We do want to make the apology as early as possible in the new parliament," she said.

She said legal advice sought by the Government gave it confidence that it would not be swamped with claims.

"All of the state governments have issued formal apologies in their parliaments, and there haven't been any legal ramifications as a result of those apologies," she said.

But up to 550 Aborigines are seeking legal advice, the Herald Sun has learned.