stanza my stone

"Is that all, or is there more besides? In a painter’s life death is not perhaps the hardest thing there is.
For my own part, I declare I know nothing whatever about it, but to look at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? If we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star."

— van Gogh, mid July 1888