"or maybe how he did not do what he could have done." Hem

How to talk about what could have been. Could have been a contender. But without the fuss. How to tell of loss that once told is no longer lost. How anybody could possibly care. With things as they are and not much time for them to stay that way. Too much to ask for your attention.

  Victor Linart, "le sioux," with his bike looking like a bad motherfucker.

Hemingway pairing Ronald Firbank and Scott Fitzgerald in the affections of Miss Stein - another swipe at Francis' masculinity. Marvelous comparison however. Really these novelists do share a gay felicity. Eminently readable. A la mode and in vogue. Satire not too wry and not too nice. Just the kind of thing anybody likes.

I always love the passage of Hemingway walking home at night and criticizing the monuments. Truly unbelievable and so honest. Paris is a still city by night. 21st century elsewhere.

Jeez, Gertrude Stein, literary Godmother, burn. Study abroad in an ambulance: Archibald Macleish, dos Pasos, Hem, e.e. cummings. Disillusion fuses with genius. Many who had it so

Gun em down. We cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow -  this ground. Duh

"The word jazz in its progress toward respectability has meant first sex, then dancing, then music. It is associated with a state of nervous stimulation, not unlike that of big cities behind the lines in a war." O Fitz. As Sidney would say You got to be in the sun to feel the sun.

Still Life

Paul Gauguin

In my yellow room - sunflowers, with purple eyes, stand against the yellow walls, bathing their feet in a yellow flower pot, on a yellow table. - In the corner of the interior, the signature of a painter: Vincent. And the yellow sun, flooding through the yellow drapes of my room, flowering golden everywhere, and the morning, from my bed, when I wake, I imagine that all this smells very good.

O, yes! He loves yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland. Sun warms his soul. A horror of fog. A need to warm.

Together in Arles we go crazy, always warring over beautiful colors. As for me, I adore red - where can I find the perfect vermillion? As for him, tracing his yellowest brush along the wall, all of a sudden purple.

Je suis sain d’Esprit

Je suis Saint-Esprit

In my yellow room, a little still life. Purple, this one. A pair of enormous shoes, used, deformed. The shoes of Vincent. Those he took, a lovely morning, at 9, to go by foot, from Holland to Belgium. The young priest - he went to finish his theological studies to be like his father, a pastor - he went to see, in the mines, those he called his brothers. Like he had seen them in the Bible, oppressed, ordinary laborers, for the luxury of the grand.

Contrary to the lessons of the professors, wise Dutchman, Vincent has faith in a Jesus who loves the poor, and his soul, full of charity, would have it so, and the consoling word, and the sacrifice: for the weak, the grand fight. Decidedly, decidedly,  Vincent was already a fool.

His lesson from the Bible in the mines was, I believe, profitable for the miners down below, disagreeable to the authorities on high, above ground. He was quickly reminded, rebuked, and the Family Council came together and declared him mad - He was however not put away, thanks to his brother Theo.

One day in the black mine the yellow of chrome flooded in, terrible rays of firedamp, dynamite of the rich, never lacking down there. Then those that crawl, swarming in the coal, say goodbye to life, goodbye to men, without blaspheme.

One of them, terribly mutilated, burnt to the face, was rescued by Vincent. “But” said the country doctor, “this is a blasted man, would take a miracle, or costly maternal care. No, would be foolish to try.”

Vincent believes in miracles, and maternity.

The fool - decidedly he is a fool - spent forty days by the bedside of this dying man. He prevented air from penetrating his wounds and paid for his medication. - Consoling priest  - decidedly he is a fool - he spoke. Work revived the dead, a Christian.

When the wounded, finally healed, descended the mine again to begin his work, you could see, Vincent says, the head of Jesus the martyr, on his forehead the aureole, the gashes of the thorny crown, red scars on the yellow earth in front of the miner.

And me…I am him, - Vincent - tracing his yellowest brush along the wall, all of a sudden:

Je suis sain d’Esprit

Je suis Saint-Esprit

Decidedly, this man is a Fool.