A good friend of mine died…a ways back…and I was reflecting on that in a Focusing way the other day when this quote crossed my path…. The stars have always been magical to me…now they are more so….there is something about this quote…..
Van Gogh: We cannot get to a star while we are alive
Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.
Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?
Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take the train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means.
To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.
–Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) in a letter to his brother Theo, written about 9 July 1888 in Arles, France. Translated by Robert Harrison, in Letters to Theo
