Starry, starry night...

The Starry Night
Vincent Van Gogh. Painted in 1889, the year before his death, Starry Night demonstrates Van Gogh's use of single brushstrokes of pure color that is a hallmark of the Post-Impressionist style. The violent agitation evident--the flame-like trees and swirling stars--in the composition reflects the turbulence of the artist's mental state, that ended with his suicide the following year. In his use of paint to express emotional states, Van Gogh would influence the development of the subsequent Expressionist movement.


The song Starry Starry Night keeps going through my head tonight. I went outside on the back porch and looked up. There to my amazement was a velvet black sky and millions of icy diamonds twinkling. They looked close enough that I could reach out and pluck one off of a thread that held it to that velvet sky. The wind was blowing and I could hear the fallen tree rubbing against a tree holding it from a complete fall to the ground. The tree tops were shooshing back and forth and I realized it was the bare tips of the trees outstretched fingers dancing quickly across the sky that made the stars twinkle so brightly...what a wondrous sight tonight. I can't remember in my adult life when I have noticed a sky like this. I remember when I was a child gliding across a frozen pond, the wind in my face, hands chapped with cold and looking up at that big dark velvet sky with twinkling stars and feeling so at one with everything...so at home in the dark cold. Winter's kiss of snow and ice, Skates on my feet it feels so nice. Gliding swiftly, cold and dark. Wind in my face, at night in the park. That is what my memories of starry starry nights are filled with.

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