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No clergyman can ever dictate to me what love and religion are made of. When I was a child, I never imagined that one day, I will go to Auvers-sur-Oise, a small and mild village where eternity lies between dawn and brick houses. I am almost at the end of my short volunteering service in France. I have one more week to go and the pressure is building up - I have to get done my to-see-list. I check every art museum. The vicious and eager tourist that I am tries to mark every important oeuvre. His portrait, old and vivid, tells me that in order to discover something about myself, I must give Mr. van Gogh a rendez-vous. It is too early in the morning to have any expectation. Our trains play hide and seek so we are late for almost everything. Finally, we step off on the platform. We see Vincent’s room- the proof that one can leave an ascetic reality while filling his paintings with the richness of his imagination. One hour later, we arrive at Dr. Gachet house. Here, in Auvers-sur-Oise, the flowers refuse to give up the fight declared by the beginning of the school year. There are no sunflowers, yet the sun is bright. The museum-house receives us not as visitors, but as old friends in strong need to be cured of solitude. In the garden a lady is sitting next to a piano virtuoso. As they begin to sing, everything sets in place and our thirst suddenly subsides. I pick up some pebbles - you know, to keep them as souvenirs for my family, just in case I run out of money. I bet Vincent would do the same. I am laying next to my travel companion on the ground where he must have given his last thought about life. She’s trying to draw what she sees. My mum’s old camera is capturing parts of this adventure. Life is infinite and yet we have a train to catch in two hours. We say goodbye to the field. September 17 is more alive than ever in my memory. I can see the short way from the field to the graveyard, a monument where kitsch declared war to poverty. Such nonsense, if you ask me because I have no pleasure in casually visiting cemeteries. We find them both, (Theo and Vincent), next to each other - two personas, once alive, now represented by simple tombstones. There’s no room for pictures here. „I can’t believe this is so simple’’, tells me Laura, my companion, while we both sigh. We go back, hoping to find the railway station without intentionally getting lost. I follow Laura on the streets, catching her next to flowers and vigorous cats. I am happy because it seems like we have made a lot of friends, despite the stillness encountering us. For me, this village is a place where solemn churches, bees flying from petunias to daisies on the inclined streets, wheat and corn-fields come together. And they don’t necessarily want to become an eternal painting. They just exist. After one year, I am travelling again. Metaphorically speaking. I just came to harvest the corn with my grandparents. Now I understand why Vincent was saying that nature is a tremendous gift and that once you begin to see things as they are, in the warm light of the day, there lies joy and truth of your existence. I realize I am such a privileged granddaughter who had the luxury to see nature not as a place where you earn your keep but as poetry that helps her meditate over the meaning of life. After one year I am (again) in the cornfield and this is all I can remember. The land is as thirsty as the corn-field. Seems that earth wants my grandpa as much as God wanted Van-Gogh and I am too naive to foresee this. Instead, I pick my ukulele with grace, strumming „You are my sunshine’’. Pa tells me „This is really beautiful, tataie’’. How could I know that what began one year ago in the corn field would finish just-right-here?