Red
The other day I watched a bullfight on television. The man waved a man-made flag in front of a bull. It is red, they explained, for the bull. A swipe to the right and then to the left. All the while the red flag flapping in front of the man and bull. Suddenly the flag went down. So did the man. There was red everywhere. The mesh of the flag melted into the wet red that seeped through. Some colors at sometimes mean something very real, like blood or life.
Blue
"He's feeling blue right now." This is what my mother told me when I was five after my brother had left the living room with tears in his eyes. Blue? How do you feel blue? Who ever thought of saying someone feels blue? I just thought he was sad. Sometime later I had gone outside. The sky was above and blue and beautiful. Something about how very open it was, the way it could swallow me or how I could float into it without ever reaching a protective barrier made me feel strange. My thoughts returned to the life around me and the sky turned back into the ceiling I had always known. It was just blue.
Yellow
My sister had drawn my mother in picture at school. My blonde mother had yellow crayola colored hair and lazer green eyes. Her dress was a little pink triangle, the tip touching exactly on the bottom of her circle head. I laughed because it didn't look like her. Mom's hair was blonde not yellow. So I asked her who it was. She told me mom of course. Then how come she has yellow hair I egged on. She rolled her eyes. "Crayons aren't real life," she left in a huff.
Though her picture was wanting her understanding of reality was sound. Blonde could be yellow in a picture made with crayons.
Oh wow Christine... this is truly an accomplished start to a collage essay! I love the feeling that you are writing from the vantage of yourself as a child, and that as a witness at that age, we see things - in ways - in a truer, more reflective light. That the color red could be more than a crayon - could be "blood or life" is poetic and deeply moving. That "blue" can be a feeling - how could we all forget - is disorienting if we actually think of our experiences with the color (a lovely sky, for instance). And that yellow can be blonde hair... yes, when do we all learn that? :-) You take the reader back to our own experiences, but better yet, you place us so firmly in yours that we have no choice but to re-learn our colors. I could imagine this becoming a pretty incredible lyric essay. :-)
ReplyDeleteChristine-
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun post, its wonderful how you incorporated your childhood into each piece... I read yours before I wrote mine the other day, and it helped! The color expansion was excellent, and really enjoyed the randomness of the stories, but then they were all brought back together on a common ground.
Wonderful!