Wheat Field with Crow

Van Gogh evidently didn't (as I had believed) paint "Wheat Field with Crows" and then shoot himself. Legends such as that speak with a loud voice, but the seven paintings he did afterward speak with an even louder one. And I wasn't especially despondent myself the other day when I grabbed my camera and shot the bird pictured here. I was moping, yes, because I was doing a photo shoot for an article about a house tour and I had to rush the interiors and the exteriors were marred by the overcast. I shot a few detail things outside and then sat down under some trees, feeling frustrated. But I noticed the yellow swathe of cut wheat, and how it made a distinct and cheerful stripe in the landscape. I played with a few compositions based on that, which was fun. And I mulled over how the interviewee had told me cool things like how his house used to be a school, and he'd attended it for several years, and there was an Indian burial site away up the hill. And the original part of the house had been built in the late 1600s, when the first Europeans were showing up in my county. And there was a drawer under one of the windows where the farmer would keep money, and come payday the farmhands would line up outside and he'd hand them their money through the window. Centuries of history around me, in other words. And history is like the ocean, or a mountain—when you're aware of it, you feel pretty small in comparison, and so do your problems, especially minor things like an overcast sky when you'd have preferred sun. The place is about ten minutes away; all I have to do is call the guy and say I'm coming over to shoot the exterior again. No biggie. So yes, for a moment I felt glum, but I said to myself what I'd have said to Van Gogh if I'd been there when he did eventually shoot himself: "Snap out of it!"