Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, November 15, 2015

What have we to be thankful for? A living world of color (for one thing). The saturated and rich, the pale, the faded, the textured, the intense, the suggestive, the translucent. Eyeballs of today, screenburned, jaded and atrophied by narrowing fields of vision, need the good, strong, sane medicine of color.

Me, I like violets, humble and sweet, with heart-shaped leaves and deep, delicate petals. They ask us to bend down and bring our faces low, and remind us, growing there next to trees, of small next to big and big next to small. And sugar violets on cakes, can we love these, too? We can. Just like we can love the sweetness of sour grape balls and C. Howard’s Violet Scented Gum in the purple package.

Violet lives in cabbage leaves, the stretched out skin of figs, orchid parts, the insides of bitten plums. A strip of bright violet sky fades with the setting sun. Here’s another one: Elizabeth Taylor, with her one-of-a-kind violet eyes, an actual anomaly to go with another anomaly, her double set of eyelashes. Violet, a bunny’s favorite color, is the color of kings’ robes, amethyst rings, and little-girl leggings. It is the color of bygone ink scribbling, “Darling, I miss you.” In violet we trust.

Indigo, mysterious, dense, and delicious, is the true color of the so-called blueberry. It is the color of new denim jeans being washed in hot water. The indigo milk cap, a plain-seeming mushroom, can stain paper and fingers this shade of blue-black. Exotic indigo is the raw stuff of Halloween masks and dyed feathers, and poison, perhaps. It is the color of midnight shadows, of things that groan and creak, and of the massive North American indigo snake that eats other snakes for dinner. Indigo, going and gone. In indigo we lurk.

Blue speaks to both the bright and glum — the umbrella of sky and sorrows drooping. Bluebirds, top testifiers of cheer, cross the airy way with wings flashing bits and pieces of elemental hue. Blue! I love your name. You are a broad color with many cousins, from evening snow and crisp men’s shirts to glistering mirror lakes and crackled robins’ eggs. It is our blue planet ever so slowly creating with crushing power the bluest of Kashmir sapphires. What wallpapers a corner of my heart, though, is that medieval-painting blue, the one next to the gold of halos, beams of glory and tiny fleurs-de-lis. That blue is lush. In blue we sink or swim, we fly, or settle in.

Beneath the warming skin of ripening fruit like oranges and mangos is the high potentate of color – green — the color of life, ever ready. Green is Go, and Live, and Surge, and Conserve and Rejuvenate in shades of pine and olive, kelly, pistachio, lime, basil and stormy sea.  Green is all this: the frog, the lily pad, the insect on its tongue, and the willow’s leaves grazing the greenish pond. Yes, of course, green is envy, jealousy and the clear appraisal of a cat’s eye. Green is sometimes goo, and bile, mold, oxidation, and life attacking itself; one of the colors has to be both creator and destroyer, does it not? In green we surrender.

Yellow is thus experienced flawlessly: amid a stand of aspens all gone golden — whose  leaves contains the sun itself — the willing human stands receptive, allowing the color to penetrate and permeate first through the top of the head, then through closed eyelids, then back and down the throat and deep into the heart where it glows in its purest form long enough to carry us through the crawling months of blue-white winter. In yellow we thrill.

Orange, perhaps the most maligned of colors, is the color of the shirt or sweater you rarely wear. A loudmouth of a color. Really, how could we be expected to pull off the signature color of goldfish and pumpkins, Gerber daisies, tangerines, Himalayan salt lamps, carrot soup, rust and monarch butterflies? Chicken Tikka and Thai iced tea: Now, there are oranges you won’t soon forget. Orange is the exclamation point of colors. It’s the flaming hair of prancing foxes in the cold dry air. Orange is electric. In orange we vibrate.

Red, the color that points its fat finger right back to the beginning of the spectrum, is a red-ripe rose, a rosehip, an apple, a tomato and a raspberry. It is Rudolph’s nose.  Red is the color of heat, of blood, of fire engines, stop signs, corrected papers, and that red dress that says, “Get me my heels, I won’t be stopped. And help me with my coat, while you’re at it.” It is the bossy child of color and needs supervision at all times, unless it’s a flower or a piece of fruit. It is a bull’s favorite and least favorite color. In red we surge.

Life gives us a rainbow of colors every day. All we have to do is look up from our handheld devices long enough to see, register and marvel. Amen.