I start at the end:
The anniversary of your death.
I have been living with you in my heart already more than three years. Time passing only brings you closer, only makes me embrace you more and more fully. I cannot know when our journey truly began because it was born before me; you arrived in Paris – you blossomed – a century before my birth. Quite honestly I feel that time is of no consequence to us as you and I keep evolving.
You once wrote in 1881, a year and half after deciding to become an artist, “No result of my work could please me more than when ordinary working people hang [my] prints in their room or workshop.” You never saw this happen so widely during your life, but I believe you know it to have occurred now, wherever you are.
Today the ripples of your influence are innumerable and insurmountable; everyone knows your name. There is no doubt you are a different man now than the one who died 119 years ago. Likewise, I am a different woman than the one who met you in Paris, at the Musée d’Orsay. You have changed me, making me more myself. I can only hope to do the same for you, to recover you from myth, to reveal the love you inspire in so many hearts as well as the profound depth of your spirit.
A song for you today, my love. (I hope you’ll excuse my voice, it’s a bit out of practice…)
Today’s quote: Rarely has silence, has nature alone impressed me in such a way recently. These very spots where nothing is left of what one called civilization, where all that is definitely left behind, these very spots are those one needs to get calmed down. (29 and 30 July 1883 to Theo)
This is exactly why I was relieved to leave New York city. We all need space to think. I wish every person on this planet would take ten minutes to contemplate the blessings that are bestowed on us simply through existence: breath, time, expression… and then hey – we live in this incredible, beautiful world, surrounded by the miracles of life. If we’d only stop to see them.
One Ping