Vincent’s day off

For Linya because she asked: Last night’s absinthe did not affect him quite as much. He woke up in the early morning, woke up into the cold before the sun came high enough to bring on the height of spring. Today, he decided not to paint. He decided to live instead.

Though living was usually difficult for him. Which was why he ended usually at the cafe drinking himself to sleep. Most mornings, he does not even remember how he managed to bring himself back here, to his bed, his room in the house he shared with Paul Gauguin who is sometimes his friend, sometimes not.

His friends think he should be living in Paris where more people might come to know him. If he became famous, more people would buy his works. But “famous” and “works” seemed to him like conceptual contradictions, polar opposites of each other. The only way he could be famous was if he had works. But how could he find the time to work if he spent the better part of his time being famous. Being famous seemed to him too much work.

And so he decided he would rather work than be famous. And Arles was the best place for that. Not Paris. His life was always for him  just a narrative of hard choices with the right decisions always made too late. And so he resolved to be more spontaneous, to trust himself, never to wait.

And when he woke up this day inside the purple of his room, the red and orange of his bed, his bright green floor, looking out his window into the brightening yellow of the world outside. He decided.

This day, he would fly out into the spring of real life. He would not paint.

After going about his morning ritual he walked over to the cafe down to the corner for his breakfast. And the day was still quite cold. The purple shadows of houses and trees still quite so long. He filled up his pipe and lit it. And then thought to himself:

I wonder if I were better off somewhere else. Living in Paris perhaps with my younger brother Theo and his family.

But he thought the better of it. He liked it here. The only reason for him to go to Paris was to find people to buy his works. And he had Theo to do that. And any case, could anyone else besides Theo, him, and his friend Gauguin really see the point, the beauty, of the paintings he made? Most likely not. Most likely not in this lifetime. Most likely never at all for the rest of history. And so, Why? Why would he do this thing he is doing?

Indeed, Why? The word echoed inside his head as if it were a hollow cavern which reverberated the sound of his thought: Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

He did not count the number of times the word echoed inside him. It was enough that he knew it echoed countless times. As if to tell him, the question was itself the answer. And then he found that it was the fact he did not know why that made the act sacred. If he did the act for some other reason than nothing, would it still be the same act?

He filled up his pipe again and lit it. His doctor had said the pipe was bad for him. The same way that absinthe was bad for him. And also his art. Except that he knew these things were bad for him the same way that life itself was bad for him. The pipe, the absinthe, art, life? They were all only a waste of time.

And what is wrong with that? What is the best thing to do with life but to waste it, to throw it away into somewhere or at something? Where and what particularly is not important. It is more important that one throws it away for something. And the best reason was always some useless thing like love. And what more useless love is there than the love of something or some act mostly overlooked by others?

And then this thought made him smile. It made him exactly happy. So happy he got up and started slowly to dance, dancing to a silent music inside him, the music of a wonderfully bright yellow spring day when he did not have work. Instead, he lived. The music reverberated inside his head and worked itself into the fugue from a full orchestra only he could hear. He hopped and skipped this way for the rest of the day.