Growing up there wasn’t a thing I liked about the color blue. Home was walled white with black and white Japanese hanging prints, glass topped tables and smooth black lacquered chairs upholstered white; white baby grand. In contrast, blue was the color of sadness, of the sky where the angry father god lived, white beard trailing through the ethers, accusing finger pointing straight at me. The wild blue yonder reeked of bombs dropping their pods of death onto victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I memorized color in nature; spinach-hued ivy leaves, viridian pine, the foliate domes of camphor, bucolic stretches of eucalyptus-lined seasonal streams. A fruitless olive wept over verdurous grass while the sycamore my father planted in a hoed-up hillock in our front yard, the tree I was told I’d have to wait fifteen years to climb, stretched tangled roots into dun-colored earth. The kelly green of three-leaf clover spread before me like a sea where I sat for hours as in meditation, picking through to discover the uncommon four, while the rhythmic kuff of my father’s shovel hitting dirt paced with vole-like intensity, carving out a fallout shelter beneath our home. In the face of the ‘fifties, green smelled of eternity, the future, something like hope my young self could aspire to.
Your image is striking! Did you do it! Love the description words you have used here.
Renee, thanks! i think i took this with my iphone – it’s an old table at a local coffee shop 😉 Aloha <3
Really nice!
Hi Bela,
I have always looked at colors differently. Green, the most soothing and harmonious colour fascinates me as it binds us with Mother Nature. It emits positive vibes of growth, giving, prosperity and all embracing emotion. The exquisite attachments it creates are eternal!
I wonder how it fell into the hands of jealousy! Shakespeare’s ‘green-eyed monster’ doesn’t relate to the upbeat vibes of green color.
Blue color carries the vastness of the sky and the depth of the oceans, it breathes serenity and contentment and its shades merge all the emotions of fear, hope and trust. It evokes divine blessings. 🙂
When Leigh Hunt said, ‘Colors are the smiles of nature’, he must have felt the emotional vibes of colors, which can be picked up when we look around at the sun, moon, sky and stars.
Aloha Balroop! Thanks for your input on color. It’s always been a visceral thing for me. And you know, I wasn’t attracted to blue for many years. Now it is a staple in my closet 😉 I love the shades of color far more than the primaries. I’m not a big fan of ‘plain’ red, yellow or blue, even in my design business. But a golden yellow or periwinkle blue or blood red? Love those and more! Hugs, Bela <3
What an interesting post, and the opening image is beautiful.
Mahalo, Paul! Yes, the image is a photo I took of an old cracked-up tabletop at a local coffee shop. I just amped up the color intensity in my photo editing 😉
Such richness; your writing here really is of the very highest order, Bela. Whither the novel? H <3
Deep thanks, Hariod. This post is an excerpt from a much longer body of writing labeled “Memoir” in my computer archives. And though I doubtless harbor enough to publish said narrative in its entirety (along with several others I’ve compiled over the years), I am disinclined to do so. I resist the politics of publishing, the soul selling the publishing world seems to require of writers. And I’m not interested in self publishing either – not that ego driven to have my work seen by a larger audience. I’d much rather blog weekly with complete creative freedom at this point in life; it keeps things fresh for me, and if one day when I’m gone from this earth my girls wish to interface with the crazy world of publishers, they are welcome to do so. Peace, dear one, and love. <3
A impressive and interesting little piece.
Thanks, BN! It’s part of a much larger body of work. Hope you are well! <3
I suspected that might be the case and hope to be able to read some more of this some time. A novel? You are a good writer.
Mahalo, BN. Thank you for your kind compliment <3
Oh I forgot to say that I am fine, thanks, and I hope you are the same.
Am 😉