Paul the Arsonist (or, Why I love Vinnie.)

In my younger life, there were several milk toast men who had become enamored with me. They were all pleasant, sweet, compliant young men, men who would have tried to move the earth and the heavens if they believed it would have made me happy. Most SMART young women would have felt blessed with these Charles Bovary types. Not I. Not at all. I would have rather run into the abyss upon their exclamations of love. I preferred the passionate sort, the ones who exhibited a lust for life. The ones who made my father shudder.

My first 'luster for life' was a brooding teenage boy named Paul. Paul had that bad boy brooding look. In my fifteen year old mind, I thought he was beautiful. Troubled, sure, but nonetheless, beautiful.

Paul was a neighborhood boy. I had decided that my life legacy would be as a 'SAVIOR OF THE WORLD.' At least that was my excuse for going through a long period in my mid teens as being 'SAVIOR OF THE WORLD.' I would be akin to the saints, a lover of the unlovable, a healer of the troubled. And Paul was troubled.


Beej, Savior of the World.


I first felt affection for him after he was released from some juvenile institute to which he had been 'assigned' after he burned a couple of abandoned buildings to the ground. Yup. Paul was an arsonist. He was my first attempt at 'saving.' Of course, I did not save Paul. He eventually dissolved into a black hole of my feelings and I'm sure I moved on to my next venture as, 'SAVIOR OF THE WORLD.'




Having said all that, and probably revealing more to you about myself than I would ever want to reveal, I am using that story as an example of my basic nature to explain why I love Vincent Van Gogh as much as I do. If any person had ever lived a troubled life, it was Vincent. Of course his art expressed his 'lust for life' (which is, of course, the title of a book by Irving Stone about Van Gogh, a book I have just finished reading.) I love his art but it is the man behind the art that truly enthralls me.

Take his ear, or more accurately, his ear lobe. why did Vinnie lop off his ear lobe? Because an underage prostitute asked him for it! Now, that's passion! (I must tell you tho, that this hooker, upon unwrapping the paper holding the lobe, passed out cold on the foyer floor. It was this act of ultimate generosity that landed our dear artist in the insane asylum.)




I am not a fan of physical mutilation. I do not find that attractive. But it was the passion behind the act that captured my heart.

A lust for life is not the same as a love for life. We all love life, whether we want to admit it. it's the lust, the LUST for life that is so very attractive to me. It's a passion to feel all of life, to see colors brighter, to have the energy, both physically and emotionally, to go for the gusto.

Okay, maybe Van Gogh was more than passionate. He was a genius. Smart and passionate?

Oh yes. Now that's the magical mix.