My Letters to Sam Clemens, Oscar Wilde and Friends

I had always valued my letters from Sam Clemens, Oscar Wilde, Picasso, Octavio Paz, Salvador Dali, and others. I've decided to gather them in a book, "Letters to Sam Clemens, Oscar Wilde and Friends,"
In the introduction to the book, I made it clear my shameless name dropping is not to drop names but draw attention to the conversation with these artists I’ve had over the years. Vincent, tempestuous with friends, but his letters are elegant and brimming with passion. The letters on "Starry Night," the meditations I've had in front of "The Women in White," "the Gates of Hell by Rodin," the visits with Dali at his museum in Spain, these are the conversations and correspondences with the famous, near famous, and the simple noble people whose names will never appear in a newspaper.
Even my conversations with Jack Kerouac have made their way here. I had grown to appreciate the curious place of Jack in the place of American writers. Like many writers and artists, we are exiles in our own time, intimately alive and brimming with curiosity, but in the pursuit of elusive we must often step outside the realm of the expected norm and pursue our own truth.
Joyce in his love affair and despair of Ireland lived in that sanctuary. Picasso with his insistent curiosity danced in realms few of us could imagine. Rimbaud who disappeared after his fame burned brightly, perhaps descending into the realm of the flowers of evil
That is the imperative for artists…to live, dance, breathe, and savor the realm of the extraordinary intimacy with your soul -- your fears, and imaginings so powerful they threaten to drown you with their beauty. This is this quest, this insistent quest, the imperative to be present with you in the most intimate place possible
Vincent had written, ‘It is not just the colors that inspire my imagination, it is the play of sunlight and light in all its moods that enchants me, as discovery light and the darkness of the human soul. When I painted "The Potato Eaters," the feeble light that illuminated their hut, was as precious and divine as the light when God first brought fire to man. The colours in my paintings are a mere imitation of what I see when I see the fire of colours, feel the as it sweeps across the wheat fields of Arles, and the sirocco winds come with their memory of the desert. Cher poet, can I offer you a taste of these colours for your poems? My colours are filled with the kisses of lovers, with the moist taste of sex, and the poignant longing when lovers part. The blues are painted from my memory of the skies of Arles in late summer, the yellows as if the sunflowers offered their most secret pleasures, and the reds are taken from my blood that I offer to each painting. The colors that are most alluring are the ones that don’t appear, the coarse texture are these peasant hands that caress my lover’s face, the light in the window of a starry night that calls me home after a day of working in the field, these futile conversations with god, and the love… yes, the love in all its ways of being, of absence and presence. Poet, are you able to speak of these longings? “ Vincent.
I heard rumors from friends of his tenuous grip on the day to day, the rages and the tears, but I knew the genesis of this. I knew of the intense loneliness drawn from the eidolon of god posing as a muse. He painted me love sonnets like “Sunflowers” drawn on thick postcards. His last letter was brief , “Dream and live that dream of a life as deeply as you dare. These are the colors i want you to hold in your soul.” Vincent .