Originally appeared in the Canadian literary journal THE LIT QUARTERLY (no longer with us) back in 2021.
Feb 19
What thoughts I have of you Vincent reading your letters traveling
thru Amsterdam + Antwerp + Brussels watching you go through
obsessions: being a pastor, your cousin, painting seeing how people
saw you as naive idiot. If only they'd read you tho they saw your art
+ did nothing + I secretly thought about being a minister except
don't like people even Unitarians so just studied religions on my
own. Never learned to draw would've just drawn naked ladies. My
favorite paintings not even in your museum: the smoking skull +
peasant's shoes tho that from Heidegger's essay + were they really a
peasant woman's shoes or just your own like in the Willem Defoe
movie. Sharing your love of the dignity of the poor and sadness that
they reject creatives. I too want to live in a small town in the
country + write poems but I'd get shot too tho I like fitting in in
cities like Portland + Salem, everyone in Brussels + Antwerp thinks
I'm German which I guess is a compliment even w/Germany holding
austerity over everyone's heads making the poor pay for the mistakes
+ greed of the rich but I like free flow of people across borders
like you had + your disinterest in manual labor not laziness like
your father accused—you saw lower class working life as a no-win
situation after the coal mines of southern Belgium. Something else
growing in your heart, crazy thought that people would pay you money
for art + thinking too of your brother Theo, his monthly payments
keeping you alive out of love not pity—he was maybe the only who
didn't, taking your letters to heart + saving them all! Only more
amazingly Johanna recognized their value when you both died. You
could've been a writer, a dutch Charles Dickens but saw not in words
but light tho my favorites the dark ones, all blacks + browns and
were you bi-polar? Your letters seem uncomfortably so—your
uninvited pursuit of your cousin (tho violence never anything you'd
resort to) making me almost skip ahead a year or two. Also your
begging + bitterness + gratefulness to Theo for money. He always knew
you'd do something even when no one would buy your paintings +
neither did you cut off your ear for a whore but for Gauguin by way
of apology to say you're right I didn't listen to you or to spite him
+ say I won't listen to you. You just gave it to the barmaid you both
knew as if that was ok somehow but shows people believe what they
want to believe—love for a whore making a better story than love
for another man('s paintings) + we mostly see what we want to see
except when people like you come along and show us not another world
but another way to see ours ourselves in it + creating it which is
what Heidegger thought though you wouldn't have liked him but with
you seeing is feeling, maybe that was the problem w/your
cousin or your whole life seeing + feeling + no one feeling what you
saw + felt which means how we see light is how we feel—Dear
Vincent, your letters come at a good time or the right time—I came
all the way here just to read them just to need them + your light.
Feb
21
I went to Antwerp + toured old tunnels, open-air sewers-canals
Napoleon ordered covered in true dictator make-the-trains-run-on-time
fashion. Thinking of you in the coal mines—rats + weird white fuzz
from their droppings, big spiders thriving in warm air, secret door
to Jesuit church in case of peasant uprising + not to sneak
out to see whores bien sûr—History of the sewers history of
the city along w/old printing presses of Museum Plantin-Moretus +
original Gutenberg Bible which even I find holy. You walking beaches
in England talking already of leaving city for country + quiet but
torn b/c of the community of painters (I just accidentally wrote
community of writers) in cities tho they all seem to mock you,
knowing that when you do move to southern light peasants will too you
can't win but at least there will be walks in woods + a friendly
barmaid to give you a notebook which will be lost for a hundred
years. Everything you do no one will care except Theo not even your
common-law wife who will leave you because you're too poor for even
her. In a park now in sun near chess players, Hôtel de Ville tower
of La Grande Place, trees not yet budding tho young men smoking bud,
children in gilles jaunes future budding protestors tho elites
have figured out how to take down mobs: accuse anti-semitism and
they'll fight amongst themselves while real anti-semites go to top
positions or in Amerika just accuse sexual harassment or sex in
general + everyone pretends to be horrified. No one knows who's lying
anymore so everyone becomes liars even especially ones speaking truth
which can't be spoken or not all of it not all the time but I liked
your Zola quote:
observer ce qui plaît au public est toujours ce qu'il y a de
plus banal, ce qu'on a coutume de voir chaque année, on est
habitué à de telles fadeurs, à des mensonges si jolie, qu'on
refuse de toute sa puissance les véritès fortes
reminds me of They Live when the best friend fights almost to
the death to avoid putting on the sunglasses to see aliens among us +
their subliminal messages which is how your letters feel—surrounded
by aliens going out of their way to make you feel bad about yourself
though these strolling sun people seem ok—I guess the aliens are in
the European Parliament conspiring austerity while sincerely wanting
economic power to equal Amerika's tho everyone here speaks english
especially the Dutch so much theirs will become a dead language, all
of which to say I wish you were here to play chess or I'd sit quietly
while you sketched. The light is good.
Feb 21?
I see mistakes coming in your letters: living with a woman because
you pity her: not love even if you find friendship + tho saying she
has become a better person because of you sounds egotistical
something is there—two people can + should make each other better
people like a band makes musicians better tho I'd like to think it's
not relationship or even family—that we all make each other better
people in the world but something gets lost + we become trolls +
thinking you can save anyone is a trap which is why the Bodhisattva
Vow is bullshit, mighty convenient someone will put off enlightenment
until all beings attain it yet if we can help someone we should tho a
drowning person can pull you under and a dead firefighter's no good
to anyone but I wonder if my letters when younger (or now) reveal
paths that should have been less taken, if recipients wrote 'uh oh'
in margins like I'm doing—firefighting, N., K., New York, grad
school, teaching, all interesting if only in the chinese-curse way,
all leading right here right now writing in a café in Brussels just
like all your mistakes led to your paintings. I know you would have
said it was all worth it—not the part about becoming famous after
death but the part when still alive, the process, days spent in dunes
sketching learning texture turning two dimensions to three + hours in
bliss creation which Heidegger used your shoes for to say was
necessary, that all along you were helping create the world,
paintings + poems the stamp of it. Some would say just sitting still
for long periods creates a better world too tho I don't
know—meditating seems to right already-wrongs while writing or
playing music seems to create the new out on the edge of
reality—Basho + Issa did both but I share your need to be out in
the woods. I wish you could visit my lookout tower this summer. The
women here wear short skirts + tights sometimes which is nice but I
don't know how to talk to them w/o seeming strange either, nor do I
have any money but you never talk about music which you never had in
your life because poor except maybe someone with a fiddle at the pub
tho even that what I want to believe—I saw a german movie about
painting, Werk Ohne Autor, changed in english bizarrely to
Never Look Away but which anyway comes to the conclusion that
artists always work with the 'ich' even if they don't
realize—no big revelation to you though radical these decades, but
the film more conservative than it wanted to admit: ultimate goal of
even liberal artists being to get married and have kids + the guy's
wife studying fashion design just ends up a mom after working in a
factory + being a manic pixie dream girl tho I'd forgive much from an
artist who paints like that except Ted Nugent was a great guitarist +
a total asshole. I loved the Banksy paintings in Amsterdam for their
political satire—also from the ich—+ the girl w/her heart
balloon drifting away: did it slip or did she let it go?
Feb 22?
I don't understand people sometimes a lot of times + neither could
you in their simple cruelty + lies. I keep thinking I see my old
girlfriend the one fluent in German—if I saw anybody in Europe
would be her tho I'd expect her to be in Stuttgart or Tübingen. I
couldn't resist if it were the sex would be hot. I could do with some
hot sex to cover my loneliness. I only get lonely in cities wandering
back streets all morning buying Tales of Unrest by Conrad
thinking of writing stories questioning not colonialism as much as
capitalism which is its cause—social justice warriors perfectly
fine w/capitalism—thinking if we just change the leaders everything
will be fine + I'm in a café everyone sitting in the cold sun
smoking. Bartender thinks I'm british she gave me two sugar cubes
just as I'm reading a poem by Bukowski in Les jours s'en vont
which I never liked before about a boy feeding horses sugar cubes
'like ice to eagles' somehow the french works for me. He rarely used
similes usually just things in themselves. I see you shambling
through La Haye in secondhand clothes, all argent going to
paints + stamps + yr prostitute girlfriend, not that that was her
fault nor even something to be ashamed of tho we all are—ashamed
not prostitutes—or maybe it's the other: these days writers have to
pay for the chance of publication in reading fees + contests which
are just reading fees + none of us will win nevertheless I have poems
coming out in The Chiron Review + a long one in the South
Dakota Review on this cloudy cold day someone somewhere wants to
publish me + someone somewhere—complete strangers—will read me +
someone somewhere will even read these letters + think of us + I'm
hungry—two falafels for lunch weren't enough—I've been skipping
breakfast trying to eat cheap in general. I'd love to be more
European mais ça coute chère + you have decided to leave
your common-law wife + her kids even knowing she may go back to
prostitution but staying isn't doing you or her any good: you need
light + space + time to paint to live. Again I'll say you can't stay
with someone out of pity. I feel bad for the children but they aren't
yours + she won't allow it + she has extended family who all think
you're a loser anyways—allons-y! You will be poor +
unsuccessful your whole life, you will lose your friendship with
Gauguin + be laughed at in the streets, you will be shot by a kid
dressed like Billy The Kid but you will have put brush to canvas, ink
to paper.
Feb 23
In Bruges! Someone playing "Sweet Dreams" as I climbed the
spiral staircase the Belfort, up to dozens of huge bells wired to
giant music box carillon with attached keyboard + the Prelude to
Bach's first Cello Suite standing right under them LOUD + literally
heavy metal. Of course you had church music which must have been
magical, probably the only reason I would have gone to church tho you
protestants were minimalist back then (scene from Mary, Queen of
Scots of bearded scottish minister in the cold dark church,
offended a woman would dare hold the throne). I'm sure trains back in
your day were just as annoying as now even without cellphones loud
people talking when all I want to do is take a nap tho the view:
farmland + villages + actual houses + fields, stands of old-growth
forest don't exist here anymore—people here don't even realize—no
wolves or bears or lions. X-PO Museum had a collection of Picasso
illustrations including the Don Quixote + Sancho + Dove of Peace,
listing painters he was influenced by: Gauguin + Toulouse-Latrec your
friends but not you. Hard to believe + sad—another insult. He must
have loved Starry Night + your sketches of lower-class women.
I am tired + thirsty from walking all day over cobblestone + en
español Bruges se llama Brujas: Witches, great name for a
city tho not what it means en français or dutch, being a
shortened name for by-the-sea. I did go into the cathedral—didn't
burst into fire—all that work + detail paid by tithing the poor who
probably didn't even mind or maybe merchants. The light good
today—spring here in february with snow in Tucson + Las Vegas.
Feb 24
Most uncomfortable in yr letters the necessity of asking for money
you think you deserve, dependent on Theo even when he angers you—what
all artists go thru in various ways but better than selling soul or
body even though feels like it + maybe just is but also your parents
not understanding nor anyone really except Theo tho not until later
will he + Johanna know how good you are. Yesterday I walked around
Bruxelles w/Reagan, we sat in a small park + talked like dozens of
others in the sun for free. You getting out of the city for the light
though your black + white work reflecting interiors of rooms + lives
while your paints taught to re-see exterieurs + surfaces + Gauguin
never had texture—I'm waiting for him to go out of fashion as a
colonialist exploiter of women of color tho fortunately naked ladies
in general are still ok—nobody'll come after Picasso or even
Modigliani tho I wonder if Klimt's clothed ladies will ever be
recognized. Painting naked ladies a good way to pick up chicks along
w/having a motorcycle + playing the guitar tho Reagan theorizes that
les filles don't like creatives anymore, his students rolling
their eyes at boyfriends in bands. Can't fault them for not wanting
to be manic pixie dream girls anymore. I always wanted a fellow
creative on the road but keep missing her—anyways might be like
Rutger Hauer tells Joan Chen in Blood of Heroes that juggers
can't fuck each other tho in the end they do at least once. All of
which is to say Vincent that I await your escape to France for days
of happiness if still poor then at least free tho already your dark
moods appearing but I like to think of Head of A Skeleton
which you painted with a lit self-rolled cigarette: that you kept
some humor in yr life if not your letters that there might have been
laughter.
Feb 25
Bought my ticket back to Amsterdam: less than a week left in
Bruxelles—trop vite! Trying not to think about l'argent
I've spent not so much trips to Antwerp + Brujas as daily meals. Oui,
des frites but halfway healthy falafels + phô tho sometimes
can't resist a baguette at a boulangerie nibbling +
walking thru streets flaneuring but losing weight by walking
everywhere—didn't end up being a big french-speaking trip hélàs,
everyone just speaks english on hearing my accent. My social life the
same as in Amerika: in bed by ten, certainly not going to just walk
up to les femmes + talk—what kind of madman would attempt
that? Meanwhile sitting in a café w/really loud music which prevents
people talking on phones tho I'd prefer those Brujas bells + more
Bach—I wonder if you ever got to hear Bach even on the organ, not
just Toccata + Fugue in D Minor (saddest of all keys) but all of it
pretty dark + intense + non-christian-y. Bach in his solo instrument
works created ways to sound like more than one person, Whitman's 'I
contain multitudes'—ourselves in concert with ourselves or
con-versation. Charles Bukowski saw you as a role model: creating in
and out of poverty and la lucha tho he would've thought the
ear being for Gauguin pathetic + chastised you for seeking community
w/other artists but I've had that void all my life too sitting there
staring back at me. A gutshot a slow + painful way to go yet you
never denounced the kid—there's a story we'll never know the middle
of. Your last painting of yellow wheatfields, yr happy color tho The
Bedrooms look sick + warped but of course it's closest to pure
light. I'm in the wind in that field + wheat-light with yr need for
bread + heat + smell of ploughed earth, crow caws + trees bustling in
their hedgerows, smile of the barmaid bringing wine end of the day.
Feb 26
Je viens de manger dans un resto syrie, falafels et du riz
et something a little like channa masala w/pita bread
which isn't called pita tho the owner refilled my basket w/great
concern very happy I was enjoying myself, making me real moroccan tea
stuffed with mint. I wanted to apologize for my government but
neither of our french was up for that task—imagine what
Belgium did to the Congo—did you know at all what was going on—+
would you have liked Heart of Darkness? Imagine choosing
between english + french to write novels in—Conrad knew polish
wasn't going to get him anything. Your later letters in french + I'm
studying latin in which you sometimes drop phrases in your letters.
Cicero now a literary + political hero ending up with head + hands
chopped off: warning to other writers + democracy lovers. What
happened to you in Divinity school in Amsterdam? One letter you're
excited to become a pastor the next a year later you're bitter +
mocking religion tho you never stopped being spiritual. Art was God.
I'm in my room now probably as small as some of yours + yes even
yellow walls! In early for the evening to write letters + read, a
young beautiful frenchwoman playing piano in the room next door, a
Chopin nocturne....
Feb 27
Less than a week—I leave Brussels on Sunday, reading your letters
here in this library café—maybe I'll meet a bookish women + have a
tryst tho my thinking always goes well I'll be gone soon so why try +
since I'm always going to be gone soon....Today a man asked me for
directions to the Magritte Museum, my accent apparently so bad he
switched to english to say 'sank you'. I swear 15 years ago my spoken
french was pas mal but I'm not sure you would have liked
Magritte—too sleek with weird apples + eyes not a true reflection
of reality which you wouldn't have done tho Yellow Room looks
odd—I suspect it's how you really saw it somehow + certainly Starry
Night plus Magritte was rich + famous in his lifetime. My
favorite of his an outline of a bird in flight thru it sky +
clouds—sky + clouds flying and he did use lots of light as much
your wheatfields. Are yr self-portraits a lack of money for models?
Some get odd—bright pinks + greens + of course yellows—seeing
yourself different—which Magritte never did nor Picasso to my
knowledge + a woman who actually liked you had a nervous breakdown,
everyone including yr family blaming you, the local minister offering
yr models money not to pose for you which they didn't accept
but the message clear: you are not welcome wherever you go. Theo
eventually lets you work in his gallery in Paris. Speaking of
letting—I got an essay accepted in an academic journal special
issue on Green Theory + Praxis + creative writing which anytime
anyone uses the word praxis look out but included contract stating I
wouldn't get paid, that I couldn't re-use my own essay for any
for-profit publication + that I'd have to get permission, for a
small fee, from them to reprint. I wrote back about rewriting the
contract but the professor/editor wrote back no, not possible but
that he'd be 'happy' to 'allow' me to use the piece again. el muy
hijo de puta académico—va te faire foutre! Glad I got
out of academia when I did otherwise I'd've punched someone in the
face. My friend Rick advised to go along with it + simply ignore the
contract later if/when I ever get a collection of essays published
(ha).
sans date
Your teeth falling out in your thirties. You smoke too much, you're
sick + dizzy + only eat bread to save enough argent for paints
+ inks + canvas—True that in your self-portraits you're never
smiling. I'm close to losing a tooth or two—bottom incisors loose.
Then I'll never get chicks except chicks w/no teeth. Can't afford an
operation which may or may not help, not covered by insurance so no
more apples! One of yr letters you write Theo about expenses saying
you have to buy dresses for yr models to wear—is there something
going on Vincent? Is this related to why the villagers hated you?
Something else certainly—yr dizziness, depression, doctors telling
you you need to rest yet you need to work to make money to have a
place to rest in. A woman who saw yr hands + thought you were an iron
worker. I'm sure Magritte's hands were fine—his whole life was
fine. People still thought Bukowski looked homeless after he bought a
house in San Pedro + drove a BMW. One time in Jackson at Key Largo
Lounge I came in wearing a p-coat + watch cap + everyone stared,
woman barfly convinced I was a private investigator, said I was lying
when I told her I taught english. Thankfully now not, tho miss being
in the classroom when learning was going on either by me or my
students—I still have thoughts of going all-out Paulo Friere
turning the class over to the students having them decide what + how
to learn from each other—would chaos ensue or actual learning or
both? I never slept with a student tho got a few offers—not sure if
it makes it better I wanted to fuck the smartest but anyways now I'm
a fire lookout + un espión en Bruxelles trying to
determine how real people live in lonely cities + who actually wears
all this lingerie here it's madness. I guess I could play more music
if I lived here + did go to a zen sit one night so could survive as
long as I had a quiet room that's all you need just a space in the
world + the brain to create a clearing to gather force + push out
again. What if you had gone to Amerika + ended up in Taos like
Georgia O'Keefe painting buffalo skulls + got run out of town there
too or shot by a cowboy. Last day of sun—came in w/cold rain will
go out w/it. Violinist busking near Mont des Arts professional-level
Bach sonata + everyone just passes him by....
sans date
So glad you're going to Paris to work for Theo. Every time I go there
it's cold + rainy but it'll be good for you to work in the gallery
studying paintings + access to others in museums—your painting +
thinking will change forever + you'll get to talk to other painters
most especially Gauguin. I liked the line from yr last letter about
women: Les relations avec les femmes sont d'une grande importance
pour l'art. You said a wife would better yr art + yet your art
did not suffer for lack of one. Maybe it would have turned out
different tho I feel the same always always wanting approval of women
but not sure if you mean just a manic pixie dream girl because I've
always wanted a woman who has her own thing: cellist or mandolin
player or fellow poet-jugger even a politician as long as radically
liberal (but please god not an academic or composition instructor)
when really I just fall in love w/baristas + banktellers b/c they're
the only ones I talk to + they smile at me. Watching a beautiful
interesting woman enter a café or even just a beautiful one when I'm
writing feels like I could either talk to her or create—that desire
turning into + onto the page to write something she would praise tho
to give it to her would be creepy I suppose—keeping her in ideal
mode b/c nothing ever works tho there have been women just like you
described Vincent where I have to talk to her— not in a
while maybe I don't want to or think I do but I just like to be alone
tho I'd like to paint someone's toenails sometimes. Too scared of
rejection scared of disappointment scared of hurting someone scared
my sexual perversions won't align w/her sexual perversions tho have
to say I've been lucky in that regard—that or a lot more women are
sexually perverse than we think. I'm probly making you blush or
degoutant-ing you. I'm just interested in the sexual-profane +
spiritual + you in the sexual-spiritual which you later drop to
spiritual which is how you start thinking you'll be a pastor in
England. Maybe I'll stop thinking about sex but not here in Bruxelles
w/all these black tights. They're everywhere Vincent, we'd better go
to the woods + become shepherds.
Feb 28
I hope París goes well—less letters from you. I'm in the
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts w/Dutch Masters, you're not here—too
late. You surely must have seen Bruegal, may not have liked the weird
stuff but surely appreciated satire of Dutch society. La Chutte
des Anges Rebelles using images from Amerika like an armadillo to
portray a devil. Did you ever see Bosch? Where did he come
from? Heavy metal 500 years before heavy metal he must have horrified
you tho perhaps you'd like Breugal's La Chute D'Icare. I
already knew it from William Carlos Williams + Auden so won't try to
top their descriptions (this is Europe—to stand where masters
stood) except to say there's a narrative and/or a lesson, something
you never wanted in a painting. Line up your self-portraits you'd get
the Andy Warhols in Brujas—Otherwise it's a whole bunch of dying
Christs in here. Jan Brueghal (Bruegal's son) also got weird,
especially Bacchus orgies + naked ladies. La Tour de Babel by
Joos de Momper horrifying in its way—in collaboration w/Frans
Francken who did the rich people in the foreground checking out how
things are going changing the parable a little tho the tower
looming-ish + even tho I got here early to avoid the crowds the place
still overrun w/field-trip children—younger ones seem to handle
museums better w/wonder but any older + all they want to look at is
each other. Not sure what the hell I would have thought at seven if
I'd seen a Bosch in person—nightmares for years. Back then in
museums I learned it was ok to like naked ladies which was so totally
wrong in Amerika or that is we all like them but we're shamed to look
meaning sex which was true back then thus Bacchus orgy paintings—not
real sex just a myth to show how bad it is but more
interesting than portraits of rich people in poofy white collars tho
curators did a good job showing earlier crowd scenes + temptations of
St. Anthonies to show where Breugal came from. Maybe Vincent you
didn't paint demons because you were yr own but now I'm tired + my
feet are sore time for lunch.
March 1
You're already in Arles inspired + painting! París couldn't
have been too bad if you stayed almost three years—longest anywhere
since you started sur la route. I didn't stay anywhere for
more than eight months in the 90s. I laughed in one letter how
painters degoutent you just like people. I sometimes feel that
way about poets (+ their poetry) who probably feel the same about me:
spent two years in a MFA program with people who wrote stuff like 'My
name is Veronica / I live in a harmonica', came out 30,000 in debt +
no real friends. Was happy to leave. No one from class ever wrote or
published again. I wonder if we'd have Gauguin w/o you pushing for
him w/Theo. You only sold one painting in your lifetime + yet
continue: the process is the meaning. One would like to think
misery not a precondition to creation we just neglect other things
supposedly more important + you've given up love, quoting Richepin:
l'amour de l'art fait perdre l'amour vrai. It's more like you
never found love + so immersed yrself in love of art tho who am I to
write about love I don't believe in it only like + lust I guess ergo
no relationship in 15 years + that a long-distance phone sex
thing—perfect: intimacy confessing dark fantasies in the dark to a
voice. That was Santa Fe. We stopped + I moved away. Don't know if
I'll ever get excited about a woman again. They still look good + I
like talking to women more than men but I'm like you I like my
solitude in woods or city, can't waste time w/just sex tho if it
happens I won't turn it down but it's never going to happen if I
don't put in some effort alors voilà. Brussels cold + rainy
again I'm in the library staying warm until a movie this afternoon +
some falafels. Two more days. You out to the woods painting
w/Gauguin, poets don't write poems together. I too wanted a community
of creatives to share + talk with came close a couple times but
people drift + stop + get married + have kids + I guess that's
meaningful too tho doesn't feel like a choice. I'm w/Emma Goldman +
Simone de Beauvoir: marriage bad at worst, unnecessary at least but
nobody today reads those essays.
March 3rd
Leaving Bruxelles by train in the rain backpack filled w/books. I
stayed on the edges so I could look in windows + look out.
Graffitti-names the only color this morning, their need to create
something in something ugly, a word you've never used in your letters
not even to describe London, only degoutant to describe
people's behavior. You took this same route north under same low
stratus clouds passing windmills having the urge to charge yelling
'have at you!' but you didn't read Don Quixote, you would have
wanted to be a shepherd. Glad your health is better—I too find
being healthier good for art tho a whole night life world here I've
not seen. Every european town Barcelona Sevilla Salamanca Marseilles
I'm always in bed reading by ten. Think of all the Before Sunrise
experiences I could have had! Still romantic enough to think if I met
a woman I'd change my life + move here in which case why don't I just
move here. Working on my novel Dawn revising + editing feeling
that alivenesss you talk about in the process + I didn't even want
to write another novel except the main character—the real person
she's based on— came in a dream and asked me to write it (just now
wrote 'right it'). Tho do another? Not that I'll stop writing but all
that work + time into a novel—I know some painters take time on
paintings but in Arles you did one a day as if you knew—should I
spend more time on smaller stuff novels make money. Shouldn't be
for the money but as you know it'd be nice. Amazingly people
somewhere like you still want to read them. Long stories
merging/changing our own long stories something about time—in which
created + in which experienced —doesn't take long to see one of
your paintings to shift how we see if only a little while maybe
forever which is why we should always seek out art in all forms so as
to constantly be shifting ergo growing—being requires growth
otherwise we're only existing. I don't know how people go thru life
just doing that I guess they don't know any better or are not allowed
to. To teach the humanities to teach how to live which is why it's
being cut in schools. In my teens I already knew I wasn't going to
make money at writing or anything because you can't live ethically +
be rich so vowed to live rightly + interestingly. So far not
incompatible with scribbling.
