An open letter to Mr van Gogh

"I also have nature and art and poetry, and if that isn’t enough, what is?"

I don't know, Vincent. I really don't. But I swear to God, if there ever was one, that I'm trying to find out, I'm trying to understand. Jesus! You have no idea how many days I've spent tracking down your life to every ticking instant and how many times those days always end with me less enlightened about your state of being. And every time I come across the part of the letter where you ask this, or when I encounter the words being plastered on some random, overly saturated photograph of a lakeside mountain top posted on an emotionally deprived teenager's blog with a #YOLO gif flashing on its header, I think about what you really mean when you write that.

I think about whether the way in which your life came to a close some dozen year later gave the slightest context to your word choice or if it really was just one of those good days you were having. I think about the tone in which you wrote your question, letter by letter, whether it was rhetoric or exasperation that dominated your breath as you sent those words out to your beloved brother.

I think about what more recent technology could have answered your question should you not have been rhetorical. I think about whether 3D films would have made it enough for you, or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, or old Scorsese gangster films, or new Scorsese thriller films, or John Green novels, or the internet, or people's insistence on analog technology for irony's sake, or iPods, or girls with as much insecurity as there is makeup caked on their faces, or Beyoncé's new album.

What if nature and art and poetry isn't enough? What then, Vincent? What else is there out here that could satisfy our need for enough-ness?