I've started to get into the first of Van Gogh's disconnections with reality in Dear Theo. It's an interesting thing to see where he first steps aside and starts using e-logic for his reasoning. His love for "K", not returned and discouraged by everyone involved because he is an adult and has no means to really support himself or a family on the one side, and Van Gogh's personal surety that K can come to love him and that as a draughtsman he can earn money by selling pictures to tourists, essentially. In a way he is idealizing his attachment and reading it as the pure ideal instead of the worldly manifestation. Interesting. I've seen this happen once before in my own life's experience... an obsession with an ideal upon which rests an ego's self image. The results are not pretty in the best of times, but VanGogh is not a social creature by nature and doesn't have a coterie of friends to step in and help talk the boy straight.
Not that he'd necessarily listen -- he denies that his father's attempts to do so are motivated by anything but the shallowest of reasons.
Well, sadly this is a story whose ending is already known and which already ends badly. It's not the sort of story I like to read myself, where the ending is known, but like TITANIC recently (10 years ago already?!?!) there's often some great beauty which is only possible in the face of overwhelming sorrow or against the backlight of the chaotic events of the time. That the human spirit pays no mind to the overwhelming odds is at once horribly frustrating and at the same time completely endearing and redeeming of the state of humanity.
Reading on.
A Weekend
I'm so happy to finally be getting a weekend. Last weekend was my first apprenticeship with Dave, which was enriching and rewarding and totally overwhelming in a subtle and good way that comes with stretching a brain full to capacity once again. The weekend before that was some other distraction which happened, though I'm not remembering it clearly, and the one prior to that was the holiday and a visit from distant friends which, while entertaining and delightful, also took up a certain amount of emotional reserves.
How strange that I'm becoming a creature of such habit that the disruption of my weekly routine has long term ripples in my life. Sometimes the sacrifices are necessary to make and often they result in great positives, but there's always the feeling of relief which can accompany the return to the time off and away.
Besides, if you have to have your patterns of life and sanity disrupted, better it be for friends and learning. It's the chores and service unwillingly granted which truly damages the soul.
I think it's high time the world switched over to a 4 day workweek spread across a 5 day workweek. The office is open from M-F, but you're only expected to be there 4 days with a floating day off assigned each week, or fixed permanently. Maybe it's just the bipolar part of me speaking, but five days at a clip can be exhausting in different ways. Or else maybe my inner artist is waking up and beginning to express resentment at all the time devoted to things in life which might fill the wallet but not the heart or soul.
Well, I'd have to sign up for Tuesday - Friday. Let the others handle the mundania of starting off the week. Give me the extra day off at home after the weekend to recover and mentally prepare for dealing with the stress that comes from work, instead of Work.
Yes, I want more time. No, it's not just to laze about. Hell, I'm looking forward to the day when I can say that the job I get up in the morning to report to consists of nothing but my own projects, visions, dreams, and goals, and not much in the way of externally imposed priorities or deadlines.
Dreaming on. :)
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