A Trail of Stars – Our Fight for Sanity in an Insane World

“A Trail of Stars – Our Fight for Sanity in an Insane World.”

by Rick Jebb (In Editing)

A s the art on the screen in front of the class shifts again, my wave of emptiness grayed over the composition of shapes and colors. This is how I think my father feels sometimes. That helpless hopelessness he had revealed—the depression that hit him at my age, sooner. A madness big enough to land him in a hospital then. And since then, even shock therapy! That was some shit no one ever talked about until he had.

This all makes me wonder about my own afflictions, my genetics. Why do I feel that sense of being separated from everything and everyone, even myself sometimes? Is this just some dark fantasy, or an unavoidable fact of my life? Why did I need to fit in so badly? Why was that so hard?

Fortunately, I still have times of peace when waves of hopefulness wash over me. Click – the picture on the screen changes to a blue swirling sky, bright stars, and planets above a village, behind a shadowy cedar—mountains in the distance. The intensity of its intricate beauty overwhelms me. These brilliant vibrations of nature captured on canvas. I imagined Van Gogh’s insanity staring out of the asylum window, subconsciously trying to heal himself. What was this remarkable, kinetic style, connecting shapes and colors with frenetic energy that perhaps resides in his sleeplessness, “…a drawing style that seeks to express the entanglement of the masses,” he said in a letter to his brother Theo. Was this the line between physics and metaphysics? Vincent was seeking a fresh style of textures with paint almost woven on canvas. He called The Starry Night a failure; to paint stars—a religion.

Hope was in the stars I thought; and Vincent faced his eternity perhaps; had he seen something we all might hope to see? And if he had, was it too much to bare? As I stared at the image, I believed I could feel his raw emotions, some volatile reality, an alien creature seeing a new world manifest amidst his quest for hopefulness. This was a struggle becoming all too familiar. Click. The image changes again.