Starry, Starry Night

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

It's my day off today, I woke up in the darkness of the early morning hours thinking about Vincent Van Gogh and crying.  I'm crying right now as I write this, fat salty tears that pool up behind the lenses of my glasses before spilling down over my cheeks.  Vincent always makes me cry for many reasons; the beauty of his work and the depth of his despair are just the easy answers as to why.

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of China blue

These words are from a song by Don McLean titled Vincent, and I hear it inside my head every time I get lost in the image of Starry Night.  For me, Starry Night is the most beautiful piece of art ever conceived, nothing even comes close to the emotional response my soul feels when I see that painting.  It is breathtaking and brilliant, profoundly uplifting and as raw as a heart breaking before my eyes.  Starry Night is the panoply of human emotions swirled into the colors of a deceptively simple image which became a master piece of tortured complexity.

Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

I figured out the main theme of my vision board, but those stars...I can't get past the stars.  Their meaning is still unclear, what is Nelly trying to tell me?  Since Tuesday night's vision boarding exercise, I see Nelly's beautiful head bobbing amongst the bright stars followed immediately by the image of the mason jar stuffed with twinkling Christmas lights.  So something is there for me to see, but I don't see it yet.  Please don't even think the trite thought that Nelly is encouraging me to 'reach for the stars', Nelly is me and me won't ever tell me something as dumb as all that.

Now I understand, what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

I'm listening Vincent, I've always been listening to you.  Deep down, I know that our paths have crossed at some point, when you were not being Vincent and I was not being Cairn.  I loved you deeply at one time, I felt your pain then and it carried across time to inhabit my soul, my little piece of you to hang on to when we're not together.  Does Vincent carry a small piece of me too?  Does the person he became unexpectedly burst into tears when he eats a cookie?

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent,
This world was never meant for
One as beautiful as you

We're supposed to say that suicide is wrong, bad and somehow immoral, I don't agree.  Life is a choice as is death, Vincent's pain was too much for him to handle so he did the kindest thing he could for himself, Vincent ended his pain.  He was not cowardly or weak, he was tired of hurting and perhaps he finally understood that he was the master of his own being.  There is no ultimate penalty for suicide, of this I am sure, there is no penalty for claiming responsibility for your own existence.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will

I still don't know what Nelly is trying to say to me about the stars, I am only sure that it is obvious or will become obvious soon.  Neither Nelly or I believe in convoluted messages, so those stars/twinkling lights do not represent some obscure wisdom that I must struggle to obtain.

I will keep puzzling it out though, it would be impossible not to with both Vincent and Nelly urging me onward with every passing second.  More tears will spill, but I am not afraid of salt water.  I only fear the day when I run out of tears.