Blue

When I was a little girl, my mother always dressed me in blue. She said it brought out the blue in my eyes. I wore dresses all the time and my hair was pulled back into two ponytails.

When I was a young woman, I wore browns and greens and blacks. On the farm, I wore jeans. I bought pantsuits in the city and wore them to college classes and to teaching. My hair took no fussing except for keeping it trimmed above my collar.

But now that I am old, I find blue creeping back into my wardrobe once again. I've rediscovered the joy of skirts. My hair, though streaked with gray and silver, reaches to the middle of my back.

Cycles of life and appearance.

When I think of blue, the blue-steel gleam of a gun barrel comes immediately to mind.

Occupational hazard, I guess.

Red and all its shades go with blood on the victim and evidence. Once yellow was the live oak pollen on a suspect's shoes.

I don't think I've ever used the colors of magenta or fuschia or puce or periwinkle or verdigris in any of my stories.

Verdigris. Hm. Maybe I should expand my palette.

Blue. It's cold, full of sadness and icicles. It's comfortable and common, country and urban, a warm sunny day and a chilly autumn evening. Blue is the oceans and the rivers, one-third of America's patriotism, peacocks and bluebirds, suede shoes and a cartoon dog. It calms and soothes the spirit while evoking a sense of professionalism. If love is the universal language, Blue is the universal color.

I love the different names of blue.

Two of the most popular shades, royal and navy, derive from human institutions.

But midnight, cornflower, blueberry, ocean, sky, and periwinkle come from nature.

We are surrounded by blue.

And the colour of fire is yellow. Yellow and white and sparks flying.

Drawn as angry red and orange and yellow flames consuming a house in a child's drawing.

But you can see blue in fire if you look.

Blue fire. Blue flame. Blue heat. Blue desire.

The blue steals up your spine and shivers into your brain. Even if you are standing ten feet apart. Even if you are on another continent.

Blue is a hot colour.

Blue and Grey.

Colours which lie close and comfortable to each other in shades.

Blue shirts and grey suits.

Grey suits and blue ties.

But oh!

What a bloody difference between the two once!

There is no civility in red death.

Maybe you know the story already, if not.....
When the world was created all the colors chose where they would live. Blue chose the sky, Red chose the desert and roses, and on and on. Green, however, picked the plants and the leaves and the bushes and on and on... Yellow was stuck. He didn't know what to do. Panicked, he went to Blue for advice.
»Hmmm.«, Blue replied. »I«ll take care of this."
Blue confronted Green and told him, »Listen you, Yellow has hardly anything, so you're gonna stop while you're ahead... you got it?? If not, Yellow and I are gonna make our own green..Do you understand?«
So green stopped and yellow was awarded...with the sun.

Today the blue letters run along my inner arm, from just above the bend of my elbow to my wrist. Sometimes the message is longer; sometimes it is shorter.

Yes, the words change each day, and often the shade of blue as well. Sometimes a pen, sometimes a brush, sometimes a finger dipped in body paint draw the lines and curves that form the letters. But a tattoo would never do. It couldn't evolve with the quicksilver of his mind and his imagination.

^116

Blue is a feeling, but the blues is the cultural expression of a feeling rooted in African American experience.

Far out in the ocean the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass. But it is very deep too.


(The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen)