l'malheur and A Year with Rilke: With Each Thing

A Year with Rilke: With Each Thing

Bedroom at Arles

by Vincent van Gogh

Who can say what is? Who is able to judge the true worth of things?

I can only measure the world in terms of longing. All things are so ready to accommodate our many and often mistaken thoughts and wishes. With each thing I would like to rest for a night, after a day of "doing" with other things. I would like to sleep once with each thing, nestled in its warmth; to dream in the rhythm of its breathing, its dear, naked neighborliness against my limbs, and grow strong in the fragrance of its sleep. Then, early in the morning, before it awakens, before any good-byes, to move on, to move on...

Early Journals [Rilke]

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I read this post earlier and went on my merry way.  Not.  Anyway, I keep coming back to the van Gogh picture.  It reminds me of a book I read when I was a lot younger.  Internally I was troubled by the suicide of my grandfather and its devastating effect on the lives of my family.  I was almost 30 before the short article on Van Gogh's troubled life and suicide brought me some measure of 'hope in ambivalence', because before such troubling, l'malheur, that must be the reality answer.  

The author's approach, beneath the Cross, where I seem to stay, brought a tender, compassionate wind into my heart about such things.  There on the Cross God brought us the most loving answer of a tender, compassionate, forgiving and Merciful God.
Now, in my own period of l'malheur, I am again 'reminded' to remember, by Christ, by Van Gogh, by Simone Weil and by Elie Wiesel; for, to remember is to walk in two worlds[Wiesel].