Old home week for me

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being yourself, dreams coming true, friends, goals, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, teacher, Vincent Van Gogh

I just came from the elementary school where several of my piano students were participating in a ‘wax museum’. There was so much running around and laughing, so much excitement and fun. Kids dress up as famous figures from history, culture and society and stand at their desks as guests file by. On the desktop is a button to press to activate the character who then recites his facts and figures while wearing a rather precise costume. My favorites were Snowflake Bentley, the first person to look at snow under a microscope (he died from exposure!), the artist Grandma Moses, the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, President Herbert Hoover, and Vincent van Gogh. The kids clearly took pride in telling the stories of their characters. Some students knew everything about the part they played and looked right at me as their told their story. Others were so shy but you sensed they took comfort in reading their note cards, knowing it would be over soon. Such a rich experience for kids, to get to show off their learning, or stretch to do something a little tricky. Pretending to be someone else, and someone notable is a great exercise for kids.

That is where I ran into my own kids’ former elementary school teachers and suddenly, besides seeing my present students in their classrooms as Florence Nightingale, Squanto and Johnny Appleseed, it was old home week for me. Five of us stood around, while the students entertained skads of visitors, and talked about my kids and what they are doing now. It was fun to hear their teachers remember how my kids were when they were little. And one, a friend now really, always says she wishes she could somehow be a kid growing up in my home! Oh, the grass is always greener! But it is a compliment I connect directly to actual dreams of my own coming true. It has been a personal goal of mine to be a decent parent so to have a teacher say she wishes I were her mother is pretty good news for me!

I loved the wax museum.

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Looks like I am stuck with my own life

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, goals, inspire, kerosene, love, mother, paints, psychotherapy, sleep, Vincent Van Gogh

Okay, here is the problem with me following the same path as Vincent Van Gogh. He suffers from legitimate mental illness whereas my mental health issues seem far more controllable. He and I were moving along quite swimmingly in our isolationist feelings and loneliness, defeated by father’s constant disapproval and mother’s distant connection, when he became so unable to cope that he failed to make any meaningful relationships in his lifetime and I got married and had kids. Of course I purchased some profoundly helpful psychotherapy along the way which he could not, but really now, nearing the end of his story, dear Vincent is eating dirt, drinking kerosene from his lamp and squeezing the paints from his tubes into his mouth. In all my disappointing life events thus far all my thoughts about dissing myself in vile ways were never acted upon. I have never felt so low as to actually drink kerosene.

Vincent is in an asylum generally wishing he had people that mattered to him in his life, because much of his family long ago distanced themselves, and his one loyal brother got distracted by marriage and impending parenthood. Vincent is diagnosed with legitimate mental dysfunction, but suddenly he is also generating fantastic paintings on a daily basis after decades of studying, drawing, and painting.

I really hoped, unreasonably, that the similarities between Vincent and myself would last. That way, I too, might imagine that my future has me becoming a genius. Sadly his genius was not recognized during his lifetime, at least not in the story thus far, so following him to the height of his success while he was alive wouldn’t have gotten me too far anyway. If it turns out I am a genius and I don’t know it, I’ll be gone before I get to cash in on all the perks.

Looks like I am stuck with my own version of my own life once again, destined to be me. Living vicariously through this massive biography is good for the summer but soon I will have to get back to my real life.

What if no one ever wrote any letters?

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being yourself, change, express feelings, inspire, natural talent, Vincent Van Gogh, writing, writing letters

Okay, half-way through the gigantic Van Gogh biography I see that he is indeed a victim of some psychologically extreme state, and all my attempts to forgive these excesses seem irrational on my part. Of course there are scholars galore who have already determined what ailed him, but I like going into this naively, allowing myself an unadulterated look at a revered artist to see just how he strikes me.

I relate to his new directions, his sudden belief that this time it will all go better and he’ll get it right. I know how it is to want something so much and to try so hard to make it be even when it is not logical. I relate to the angst, the betrayal, the discord, and the giving up but trying again because passionate feelings do not just leave because you tell them to. Anger, denial, disgust, intolerance, and lots of other negative emotions follow him around no matter where he goes. I understand that, to a point. But….eventually the great desire to find prostitutes everywhere he goes, and the financial and time investment he makes in them, including the subsequent illnesses and recoveries, and then the resultant lies, not to mention the years of feeling entitled to live completely off his brother’s largess all while berating him, have me seeing that indeed Vincent and I have parted company despite our early similarities.

The fascination in this for me is that his life is documented in a multitude of letters, written in his own words, just because that is how the world communicated then, and these unwittingly serve as valid, believable fossils of his life and his inner struggle.

My kids thought I was just making cookies and muffins but I was actually on my way to a masterpiece

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asylum, baking, being yourself, cooking, dreams coming true, express feelings, goals, inspire, natural talent, passion, Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh took to wandering the streets barely clothed, barely fed, sleeping outdoors and muttering incoherently to himself like a vagabond for a year. He so upset everyone around him with his wayward behavior that his family decided to have him committed to an asylum where he could be hidden.

He resisted the asylum, yet complained of gnawing disappointment with himself for failing to meet his father’s expectations. He felt so low he wrote that if he ceased to be it would be best for all, yet he defended his actions as a man of passions, and claimed that his hands were tied, and that he was maddened by pain, unable to free himself as if he were a captive bird.

He wrote that ‘one does not always know what he can do’. Under all this he instinctively felt that he was good for something. He asked, “How can I be of use? How can I be of service? There is something inside me but what can it be?”

Silly me. I am still waiting for my path and Vincent’s to diverge before we both go crazy. I have not literally stripped myself and wandered aimlessly, but I have felt gnawing disappointment for failing to meet my father’s expectations. I have wondered what it would be like to just not be, and I have felt unable to free myself as if a captive bird. I am aware that I do not always know what I can do. And I instinctively know that I am good for something.

But now I see that it is here when Vincent starts drawing carefully and methodically, with great passion, that we head our separate ways. Already he is much more possessed than I. He cannot see beyond his own pain to meet with another and form a family, or quiet himself to hold a job, or rest enough to consider anything but the driving forces that push him. He is tortured to the point that by the age of twenty-seven Vincent can accomplish little besides scratching out pictures of everything he sees with dark pencils. Me, at twenty-seven, I was married and working. My feelings might have been similar but my actions were quite different.

This leads me to wonder whether if I’d just kept indulging in my true passion at the time, baking, maybe by this point in my life, like Vincent, I too would have created a masterpiece.

Maybe we are all worthy of life

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art, being yourself, express feelings, Gauguin, goals, inspire, metaphor, natural talent, parents, the sower, Vincent Van Gogh

Just skipping ahead to look at the color plates of Vincent Van Gogh’s work since when I get the nook back I know the photos will be tough to see. I know nothing of art except what I see. Since there is no photography I appreciate that Vincent Van Gogh has captured for me the look of the local postman, the look of women eating potatoes, the look of a copper pot full of flowers, and the look of the interior of a restaurant in 1888. He found it reasonable to paint for me his own chair with his pipe, as well as that of Gauguin’s, to let me know what the chair of a great painter might look like. And it delights me to discover that the chairs of great painters look like chairs I might sit in, yet each with a distinct personality. Maybe my chair has a distinct personality too.

As I turn pages and see pictures some appear that are familiar, the famous Van Gogh’s. I am able to see now that they become unusually energetic, full of movement and color and detail as his style develops, and I know I have have not appreciated this before. When I free myself to just see them for what they are, I too, an untrained viewer can appreciate this great art.

Themes arise. He maniacally honors a drive to draw and paint the sower over and over, in iteration after iteration. There is some reason to toil over every stroke. In the end the scenes of the sower are haunting and symbolic. Van Gogh’s father preached the stories of the sowers from the Bible and used the metaphor of the sower often to teach the promise of rebirth.

It touches me to think that Vincent was drawn to his father’s theme, this same metaphorical scene of casting out with the hope of rebirth, as something worthy of life.

Wondering if we are both going to go crazy

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artists, being yourself, change, crazy, express feelings, goals, inspire, love, paintings, parents, teacher, Vincent Van Gogh, writing

I am back to reading about Vincent Van Gogh and curiously moving ahead to find out if at some point our paths diverge. Because so far, much of Vincent’s life feels similar to my own, and I am wondering if we are both going to go crazy. I have made no secret of the fact that I have felt profoundly lonely during my life, and happily for me, so did Vincent, at least to the age of twenty-four, as far as I’ve have read. I say happily because there is some solace in thinking a great painter like Vincent Van Gogh could not locate his compatriots along the way as well. His life so far is marked by great wanderings, and like me, he embarked on seemingly futile paths repeatedly, primarily at the behest of his parents, rather than leading himself from his own heart. He tried and failed at many endeavors, but always held true to the interests that sustained him when he suffered.

For him it was the hope of rekindling happy feelings of his youth, and his sincere love of art. For me it is the constant of writing my thoughts and interpretations of my experiences. So far in the story, he has been unable to earn the pride of his family, because as I see it, he had little passion for the paths he followed, and the interests that held passion for him he barely acknowledged, setting him up for disappointment. Besides the details of his many failures, the story is filled with details of his interest in gathering reminders of great art. He amassed prints of paintings and drawings that appealed to him, and learned about artists and their methods, slowly, methodically, continuously, covering his walls with these inexpensive comforts. Somehow despite all his supposed failings at becoming a preacher, or a teacher, or a book seller, or an art seller, he did not ever stop doing what truly thrilled him, appreciating the artistic expression of others. I love the message in that even though I think I’ll be disappointed when I learn that he is considered mentally ill.

If I can appreciate the things I do, the writing I create, and other seemingly unimportant or at least unprofitable endeavors I engage in simply because I love them, maybe they will lead me to my true calling too, even if I do go crazy along the way.

Live, human, non-caloric comfort

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being yourself, brownies, Catherine the Great, comfort, Diane Keaton, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, high-fat food, joy, Nook, potato chips, Steve Jobs, Tina Fey, Vincent Van Gogh

Today as I put potato chips in my mouth I said to myself, “I am eating this as comfort food. To comfort myself. Maybe I’ll get brownies next.” So rather than locate live, human, non-caloric comfort I opted for a shiny foil bag that crackles in response when you address it by hand. The live, human, non-caloric kind of comfort is not so easy to locate all the time, and especially if you’ve requested it extensively for weeks on end while sitting on your rear on the couch while others do the work of life.

Not looking to complain about having my foot repaired so I may dance with my man again, but it is kind of a long haul. Today my neighbor turned in my Nook at the library for me, just as I was enjoying a great book on Vincent Van Gogh. Since you cannot renew the Nook, and I’d wasted time on Tina Fey’s Bossypants, and a bit of Diane Keaton’s memoir, and even some of a WWII story, all also loaded onto this particular biography Nook, I didn’t finish Vincent’s tale. I would have gladly learned about Catherine the Great, and Steve Jobs, too, if only they’d let me renew the thing. My neighbors are great, and someone will go get me another Nook when my turns comes up again.

So while I wait for human comfort, or sooner, nonhuman, non-caloric, parchment-style comfort, I will enjoy the immediate power of high-fat food.