Short Fiction: Our Cosmic Ties

"Our Cosmic Ties" is built around a fictional letter written by Vincent van Gogh from Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Remy, on the day before his art supplies will be returned to him. It first appeared in The Abstract Elephant Magazine - Issue No. 2 Ideologies, Belief Systems, & The Human Condition in 2020, and was later republished in the Art Inspired by Art Anthology published by Quilkeepers Press in 2022.

My Dearest Theo,

There have been very few times the voices guiding me were just my own. You used to say I am an idle bird. That I have started and ended more careers than the sky has breaths. And yet, I began all of these because you told me to. Or because father did. Painting finally felt like something of my own. But even here, I used to be guided by others more so than myself. The Parisian salons. Fellow artists. My precious Millet… I remember when I first saw The Sower. The simple farmer who possesses an air of true nobility that only Gods and royalty had earned before Millet reset our gaze.

Vincent closed his eyes as he tried to summon one of his most treasured visual memories.

Striding with powerful legs that could rival Michelangelo’s Hercules. The Hero of the Common Lands. Closest to nature. Closest to death.

Walt Whitman once described this painting as having a sublime murkiness, Vincent recalled.

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!

He clutched the poetry collection resting in his lap while he followed the patterns shaping the morose serenity of a barren field.

Millet’s earth was not smiling. Nor was it voluptuous.

It screams. It wears the same face as the sower who, despite his heroics, was in turn mirrored in these hungry soils.

Vincent remembered his earlier years as a painter, when his own observations of peasant life lacked any hint of a more soulful intuition. Provence is no place for murkiness, however sublime. It ‘should’ yield an earth that is voluptuous. And the peasants that populate them, should still be as real, as grotesque, as expressive as the colors that reflect our inner most selves.

Do you remember my second portrait of Escalier, brother? Do you remember his shoulders hunched over his walking stick? The color, burning, scorched, with the blistering heat of orange and yellow hues? That’s who he was. So, this is how I painted him. The salons of Paris prefer to be told about life through sentimental doodles. Reality… ‘my’ reality, seems to act more like a repellent. Millet made them uncomfortable too. Still, Millet and I paint a different reality.

His fingertips drew closer, pausing right before they could make contact with the canvas.

We all create. We sow ideas. Sometimes before they are ready to grow.

Like an ugliness that unsettles. A reality more genuine than truth.

Millet was not wrong.

Just further away.

Vincent looked up from his paper at a room that only answered in darkness. While the memory of his most recent crisis was a haze, these last few weeks have felt like he was living inside a portrait someone else had painted of him. Some stranger who had never met him before sat down, picked up a brush resting on a monochrome palette, and absentmindedly composed a few crude features. He had started to put himself back together, but the disturbing portrait had left its mark. 

A mark that can’t be painted over, however bright my own palette.

I am further away as well. Even from where I was in Arles not too long ago. However much I cherish them, my farmers, Millet’s farmers, they all feel like they belong in a different life. I rarely pursue my passion for portraits anymore. Not that I have much occasion to. Even now, when thinking about dear Millet who had always been something of a balm, the comfort is temporary. The inspiration fleeting. The connection, somehow, disjointed.

The last portrait I painted was one of a fellow traveler with a mind and a face as ancient as the gnarled trees in the asylum gardens. Not ancient like a prophet, but ancient like a drifter forced to live the lives of countless unwelcome ghosts. Do you remember the portrait, brother? I admit it wasn’t my finest hour from an artistic perspective, but I asked this man to sit for me for one reason only: his eyes. That is where the ghosts still live. The director insisted none of the other residents sat for me again after that, as if I had revealed some horrible secret.

He sat back, thinking that despite this isolation, he did welcome that rare silence so hard to come by within these walls. The daily torment knowing that anytime chaos could break loose. More than a couple of times, that chaos was caused by his most recent subject.

I do still see portraits everywhere, even if I don’t feel as inclined to paint them. These faces, every little blemish, wrinkle and twitch tell a story. Every narrative as beautiful and haunting as the next. And as true. Each of our stories are set in the same hollow world. All we really do here is bury ourselves deeper into our own minds because of this curse that has been cast on us: time. Time spent alone. Time spent in reflection. At least I still have my art. My books.

Well, I don’t have my art right now. Although I do have one book.

This little book was the most precious item in the world right now. Vincent placed his hands on the thin, worn copy so delicately as if any impulsive movement would turn it to dust. As his fingertips moved across the torn edges, he reflected on the words that have shaped him into the artist who’s sitting on this chair right now.

Emile Zola’s gritty truths.

Charles Dickens’ passionate morals.

Victor Hugo’s portraits of human depravity.

George Eliot’s odes to country life, …

… Walt Whitman’s visual poetry mapping our soul.

The sun was setting over the gilded wheat fields, beaming with light as if God himself had painted them. Vincent longed to be outside and explore the vibrant patchwork of olive groves and vineyards just beyond the town center. The cicada will be taking the stage soon, with the coming season laying out a warm bed for him. A warmth that turns the air thick and moist, alive with more scents than a fresh food market. 

Only in the Provence, is your sweat seasoned with the zesty richness of rosemary and thyme. And only here, are the nights void of a cutting blackness, and instead, speak of a promise.

He smiled.

I suppose I have come to appreciate nature itself as a portrait.

I have been rediscovering my love for the poetry collection by Walt Whitman. It is one of the only objects I have had in the room for these past few weeks other than some paper and chalk. I don’t know if it is the book itself or the fact that it is the one piece of literature I have been reading (and re-reading) for such a long time, but Whitman’s words have been both terrifying and delighting me.

In some ways, Whitman puts into words what Millet puts onto canvases. The inherent nobility of the common man. But, while Millet’s farmers reign over little more than their crops, Whitman moves on to take us on a vision quest. This is where I connect most with his words. Where he celebrates the unparalleled expressiveness of nature. Something I have been feeling more in touch with since coming here.

Every step I take out into the countryside feels like my first steps into a new life. And with every step, I feel these hills are wanting me to slow down. Tempting me to walk and ponder, to paint fields that transform with every passing cloud. Mere patches of land engineered feed us, are lifted to something prophetic and holy out here.

Night was close. Black trees towered over the dimly lit horizon like cloaked guardians. The winds rocked their crown and their heads tilted, like a nod, begging him over. He wanted to join them. Desperately. He longed for a friend as precious and pure.

With the next gust of wind, their bodies seemed to grow, arching over the slumbering town, watching like a curious visitor. There was nobody outside, but some homes were still lit. A tiny speck of brightness that broke the trees’ dark figures with an orange hue forming near the roots. The winds jerked and pulled, and for a moment, it looked like their roots were a prison. And that even comfort, nourishment, life itself, was worth escaping.

Nature is more than a collection of organisms. It is coming home. “Something fierce and terrible in me eligible to burst forth”, Whitman observed in this earth of ours. I know this feeling very well. The sacred and the destructive. The innocence and the wild.

Yes… Innocent and wild. And there is nothing more innocent and wilder than trees. I wish I had my Wheat Field with Cypresses in here with me.

The sky, always moving, always changing.

And the blue. The pure, bright, blue set off by the cypress.

Its dark, scaled leaves moving upwards, like waves, towards infinity.

Do you remember the Wheat Field and Cypresses I sent to you, brother? The director felt some concern when he saw that one. A sky as erratic as an ocean, he said. And the looming presence of the tree of death.

Death. Yes. But more so the tree of durability and transition, surely. Vincent thought. Noah even built his ark with it. They guide. Sustain. Support. Transport?

Nature is more than what we see before us. We are formed by it. Born from it. Whitman understands this. He transcends the limitations of our diseased minds and conquers both life and death by reminding us of our cosmic ties. When I read how he describes a world so balanced and blooming under a sky gleaming with light, I feel every inch of me coming alive with an almost unbearable sharpness.

That is what painting nature feels like... It is where we are born. Where we delight. And where we return. It is the architecture of our body. It is the blueprint for our minds.

I remember painting my Olive Trees with Yellow Sky so well. The yellow lines pulsating, expanding, rhythmically, like a heartbeat. I wanted the canvas to feel even hotter than the actual sun. I wanted the shadows to look like melting tree barks spilling out over the grass.

Liquid, like blood.

I am reminded of how painting is an exploration of ourselves, in our bodies as well as our minds. You may remember my Olive Trees with Yellow Sky. Imagine the mountains that make up our mind, the sun that feeds it, the fields, our skin, the grass, our veins… The trees, our very foundation.

Iron bars cut the moon’s naked skin. The cracked bone, brittle and aging, couldn’t find any light, and so the trees were silent. On the opposite end of the horizon, a silent neighbor flickered gently. A whisper. It was unclouded and bright, like a mind in its infancy, exuding a peace that Vincent envied.

It is late. I can see the Morning Star. Even through barred windows, I am not blind to the brilliance of the only star with the heritage of a human heart. This cage used to compromise my view, but the bars have evolved into something more familiar, and a sight I welcome with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Sometimes, it embraces me with arms cold as night that gradually warm through our mutual touch. Other times, it greets me with a softness that stays with me all day, like a kiss on my skin.

Tomorrow I am getting my materials back and I can finally paint again. Released from this creative purgatory. Tomorrow, I paint. Tomorrow, I return to myself. And I return myself to the world. Is it a kinder world yet, Theo? How will it receive me?

Oh well, who can say what tomorrow will bring.

Tomorrow is still centuries away.

For now, Tomorrow is nothing more than a Utopian Dream.