the colours of the night

"it often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly colored than the day," van gogh wrote to his brother theo in 1888.
finding light and colour in places that are either obscure, gently lit, darkened by weather, or simply a feature of the sun rising from behind the woods to the east or having gone down across the fields to the west is fast becoming one of my favourite pursuits. it represents a lovely metaphor in a time when it is all too easy to characterize our world as descending into a dark place.

not at all.

we are witnessing the ending of a world for sure, but we are also witnessing the simultaneous birthing of a world that intuitively makes much more sense and has the potential to be more clearly attuned to notions and precepts that became optional or overlooked in the old world leaving.

notions and precepts such as care. love. kindness. responsibility. quality over quantity. truth. love.

i said that twice. love.

how these will manifest in the terms of this world becoming are anybody's guess.

the sufi maxim "in this world but not of it" clearly describes the ideal of a state of goodness functioning and being well in a circumstance that might otherwise trivialize or marginalize that state.

so it is with the features i suggested earlier. we have enough experience to know that each of those - when placed in the marketplace - acquires less than savoury qualities. ask any musician, ask any artist, ask any environmentalist, ask any honest politician, ask anyone who knows what love really is.

so the idea of light in the darkness really appeals to me. like sunrises. beautiful lights at night.

a year or so ago, a lovely and powerful exhibition of paintings by vincent van gogh was shared by moma. titled "van gogh night" it features the work of this amazing man in several contexts: early landscapes, peasant life, sowers and wheatfields, poetry of the night, town, poetry of the night, country.

look for the light in the darkness.