"Right now I'm fine with Arsenal, but I cannot deny that to return and play for Barca would be a dream come true for me. I chose to stay at the club last summer and right now I'm totally focused on the reason for that decision which was to try and win trophies. We'll see how things have gone by the end of the season."
- Cesc Fabregas, probably as disillusioned as the rest of us
There are approximately 170 van Gogh paintings at the museum, arranged in chronological order. It's neat how you can walk across the floor and see how Vincent developed as an artist and how his style of painting changed as he grew older and sadder.
There's this one spot in the gallery where you're looking at Wheatfield With Crows, with its gloriously golden wheatfield below a dark, foreboding sky. Three pathways meander through the field, going nowhere. It was painted shortly before his death, and it really does reflect a troubled mind. It's claustrophobic and disturbing, and there's this sense that there's no way out.
And yet, if you turn around, in the opposing corner of the gallery, you can see his Paris paintings, where everything is brightness and lightness. You can feel the optimism from those paintings, the sense that the world was just beginning to open up for him and that everything was going to be peachy.
I found that incredibly poignant. You're only young once, and there's only one time in your life when the world opens up and reveals itself to you in all its glory. If you miss it, you can go looking for it, but it'll be meaningless, a chasing after of the wind. It'll always be just over your shoulder, on the other side of the gallery.
There is a rather tenuous Arsenal link to this...
It ties in with Cesc because I seriously think he should consider leaving at the end of the season. This is on proviso that we don't win anything, and we don't look like we're taking steps to rectify the situation. Cesc is too good to play for a side that can't (or won't) challenge for major trophies. He's got so much talent, but this time will only come once in his life. He should be making the most of it.
Cesc should be at a club that wins things.
