I stole this and all the quotes I could scoop up over at my pal Sandy Donabed’s blog because it just all went with my trip to see Van Gogh’s works Sunday. There will be many quotes coming from Van Gogh as I am starting to read Vincent’s letters. (The inexpensive penguin version of selected letters is here.)
I am still promoting going over to see the exhibit if you haven’t already.
I’m spending the day with mom as she’s having a little thing taken off her arm. The office suggested she bring a light blanket and that she come prepared to spend a chunk of the day.
I stopped at Arlene’s Art Supplies store last night on the way home which is always a good time. So many pens and papers and stuff… must.show.restraint. But I had a mission. I hoped that they had “adult coloring books” and they did, quite a selection. So I got two, and some no-wood color pencils (and I knew I had crayons at home) and then I asked if they had, after hesitating as to how to ask, triangular graph paper. Oh, the guy said, isometric. Yes indeedy that’s the stuff, gladdened in my heart that someone else in the world knew that.
So off I went with some new buttons and the good feeling that comes from wandering around looking at art supplies, even if they make you wish you knew how to use them ALL.
Now I’m by myself in the waiting room with our two bags of “come prepared to be here awhile.” They advised her she might want a light blanket and a snack and a beverage. She could hardly decide what “blanket” to bring but went with her bug jar quilt.
Neither of us are very good at traveling light. Our philosophy is: if it will fit in the car it can come along. My prep bag has two water bottles and some snack crackers with cheese or peanut butter and the art supplies. And the book of Van Gogh letters. And my computer. And my moleskine. And a bag of almonds.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by his assassin’s bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.
Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
“Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.
Robert F. Kennedy, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Remarks to the Cleveland City Club, April 5, 1968. Read the rest here.
I saw this bit of Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming quoted in the NYTimes comments about last night’s shooting in Charleston. As I read the early reports, even then it was being considered domestic terrorism, and moments later was being deemed a hate crime but it was all without detail of course. A man walks into a church and starts shooting.
These days it looks like ready-made news:
A man [insert location] and started shooting. [insert number killed] killed and [ insert number injured] injured. Those in crowd ask, ‘but why?’. After the suspect was found and taken into custody, his friends and family expressed shock, ‘we never guessed it would come to this’ and his family joined their sorrow to those who had lost loved ones in the shooting
Well, back to Yeats for a moment. Here’s the quoted first stanza:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
If you read further, it ends:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This week I’ve had a few encounters with fellow human beings that left me a bit breathless, concerned, angry, fearful and frankly not knowing what to do. More and more I feel that it’s in all of these small, day to day encounters with hatred and fear and ignorance that we must take a stand, we need to say ‘no, that’s not acceptable’ or it just becomes ok to keep acting that way and saying those things. If enough people say ‘no, that’s not acceptable’ change can begin.
Drawing the line now. No more. I know I’ll sadly have more instances to sorrow over lives lost to hatred and stupidity and fear. But I hope they’ll renew my commitment to look at the line I’ve drawn.
working quilter…
Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without eror, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness.
