Even the title’s a little uncomfortable. We like things to be able to be checked off. But what I learned from sitting with Vincent this week is that sometimes a conversation is left incomplete in service to the bigger picture.

Above on the left is a picture I took at the Cleveland Museum of Art of The Large Plane Trees because I am fortunate enough to live in the same city as that piece. On the right is the same section of The Road Menders, which he painted later in the studio, using his earlier painting as a guide. I’ve written before about how much I love The Large Plane Trees because of its passion and very obvious need to capture the moment before it disappeared. He had to catch the colors of the leaves changing and was so desperate to do so that he used a tablecloth rather than wait for canvases to be delivered. There are places where you can see the pattern of the cloth beneath because portions of the painting were left as rough sketches to be returned to later.

And he did. On the right, because he was working from memory and because he had his earlier work as a guide, he was able to flesh out a great many more details. I was especially struck by the two road menders in each iteration of the work. On the left, they look very…unfinished. Because they are. On the right, the lines are clearer and you can see much more clearly what the two figures are doing.

I think certain conversations are like that. When you Just Begin, sometimes you have only a very rough idea and it gets to a point where you have to stop. The light looks how it looks only for a brief time and sometimes you have to direct your attention elsewhere or you’ll miss it. When I have been in a conversation that has stopped (who goes through their whole adult life without having that experience at least a few times?), I work hard not to begrudge a person this. Maybe at some point we will pick it up in a different context to make the lines clearer, but maybe not. Either way, my hope for each of us is that we catch the light in whatever way speaks beauty to us.