Matt and I met on a Tuesday morning in NYC. This Van Gough was our first real conversation. Matt said it was his favorite. I was surprised at how globby it was. When you see this painting in person the paint swirls with flurry and passion and a certain reckless emotional abandon. It is mesmerizing, really. And then, amid all the perfectly splashed circles and blobs, there are these tiny red flowers at the bottom that are ever so delicately painted on. An afterthought. Control amid frenzy.
Wheat Field with Cypresses was painted in 1889, one month after Van Gough's arrival in the asylum at Saint Roy.
So why Van Gough and why a blog? I have hesitated to start a blog because they always sort of make me feel melancholy. Melancholy in the best way, mind you. I think the reason is that I am terribly nostalgic and jealous of my own memories. Blogs are evidence that life is being lived all around me and that it is daily and interesting and fleeting. I don't know why a post about what Rebecca ate during the day seems more fleeting and therefore more precious to me than a polished essay I read in some book. But it does and so I find myself reverting to some future me, looking back at the present and sighing a deep sigh and singing, "Those were the days." And the thing is, I think I feel it more as I look at the lives you are recording than I do at the life that I am trying to record. And it leaves me with a sweet melancholy, urging me to sit on my wall heater with a Wallace Stegnar and think.
So, the question remains, will this blog be a Van Gough pre or post red flowers for me? Or will I forgo the passion altogether and write only the controlled afterthoughts? I suppose it doesn't matter. I hope there are both. I hope that there are entries about all the things Madeline has colored on that day and entries like this that in Matt's opinion are "too literary" for a blog. Thoughts and dailiness. Crossing to Safety and Goodnight Moon. Both.
And needfully so.
4 comments:
When someone starts a blog, it makes me happy. But to be able to read something that shelley wrote, and to know that if things go well, I will be able to do so on a regular basis? This makes me dizzy.
Isn't it interesting how we can feel nostalgia for things that are happening right now? I already miss me and Levi's first year of marriage.
So glad you're here Shelley. And what a title! I agonized forever about a title and finally copied a chinese hotel agent. Sick. I'm not through though.
Shelley, I am always amazed by your writing! Keep it up and print it off too. Love, Mom
Shelley -
Thrilled, ecstatic, elated that you have started a blog. I figured the next (if any) McConkie's to start a blog, it had to be you. I love the title and your writing. Don't worry that my sister and sister-in-law, like me are both English majors, but don't expect anything like this to show up on my blog. You are wonderful.
Shelley. I'm glad you have the 'ey'. It reminds me that some things should be extended: ie, your name, and time with you. I don't think I've ever left your house feeling satiated. Full? certainly. Happy, encouraged, uplifted, more intelligent, a wee bit jealous yes... but knowing that I never got to live with/by you and reap long talks and brain ramblings with you? Unsatiated.
Thank goodness that now I can peak into what nostalgically might have been mine were we college roommates. I LOVE your writing (just read 3 entries and came back here to say so).
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