Blue

When I feel ‘blue’ I wonder what shade it might be.

In a museum, in front of a small immaculate landscape painting, a man I did not know turned to me and said, “In Russian, we have more than forty distinct and separate words describing the color you call ‘blue’. Other people think we are very sad, but Mother Nature makes these words in snow and ice and mist, water and sky. Look!”

Why me? Despite the paltry offering in my native tongue of words describing blue, I know all too well what the Russian is talking about. And, frankly, he is a little sullen, if not altogether sad, but this I also understand, or think I do.

I have excuses or reasons for why I linger so long in all things blue: it is easier on the eyes and there are more colors (and moods) with blue than without; their variety is a delight to discern.

A color wheel is like an upside-down arch; its keystone is the truest blue, betraying no tendency toward yellow or red. Two arms reach up from the blue core, one becomes green on its way to yellow, the other turns purple midway toward its red palm. Above, a narrow slice of blue-free color stretches from pure red to pure yellow, an orange filament of pure joy whose entire expanse is one third of the total wheel. Two thirds of all colors contain some amount of blue; too much of life to ignore.

As night follows day, blue is rest and repose from the exhausting and gorgeous delirium of the brightness that burns out fast, yet lingers in traces like shimmering light on a watery surface, the glimmering turnings of shiny fishes or the fluorescent glissandos of unnamed creatures burrowing deep into the couch of vibrant darkness.