Advent, Day 15: See Through Branches

(Day 15 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about negative space; today we consider eye games.)

See Through Branches

See through branches, or the pounding rain;
See through a dragonfly’s wings.
See through silence, 
See through pain,
Or walk
By way of night:
One long path of
Things revealed
To those who 
Give up sight.

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Have you ever played the child’s game of sitting in a moving car on a sunny day, eyes closed – and turning your face towards the sun? 

The passing trees splash cool against your skin, and their shade smacks your closed eyelids –

But the return to light is swift. It brings warmth and an unreal color: Orangeblackred – said fast and all together now – mysterious in its illogic.

That is: by this age, you have likely already learned the folly of mixing in black. 

You know yellow and red make orange, and orange to red makes…redder orange? And you have also likely found that there are many (many) ways of stumbling into “inadvertent brown”.

But – the matter of black. It’s the surest lesson any paintbox or marker set ever taught. (Don’t talk to me about crayons.) 

Black is always the last color made. When black is added to anything, there is then nothing left to add. 

The fact that one can use the words “orange” and “red” to talk about this particular color indicates that it must be not-black, because otherwise how would those words occur as a necessary part of the description? 

And yet the “orange-ness” and “red-ness” of this color disappear the more one focuses on them. 

So in the end, one says “Orangeblackred,” and by then the car ride is over and it’s time to come to grips with the fact that eyes really aren’t meant to be strained while closed…

Of course, now I know a better term for that color was “my eyelids’ blood vessels.” Which is probably also the next Pantone color of the year. 

But it was an early intro into the way both language and sight reach their limits; and the joy – as in a game – of trying to find words for all one isn’t seeing, even after the point where words aren’t enough. 

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