Thursday 16 March 2017

A Few Musings On A Day On Which I Am Too Ill For Profound Or Crazy Writing

Today I am unwell.
My brain is very foggy and I'm finding it difficult to focus on anything at all.  Everything hurts.  I managed a Facebook status update this morning:

A thought on a day on which I am ill.

I never asked to be born.
But I am not going to ask for a refund on life.
I can't. It was a free gift.
As freebies go
It's much better than being given a whistle
By a trades union at a rally.
A whistle is just an empty noise maker.
Life's noise is an echoing thunder
Vibrating the whole universe
Into purposeful crescendos of meaning.


But I want to post something more at eight in the morning tomorrow.
So.  Some not-truly-random, brain fogged musings on colour.  Musings are possible tonight.  Just about.  Writing the stories and poems I want to write is an impossibility.

The colours of an elephant. One of several in Bolton.


Red

The colour of the squirrels I have never seen, endangered accidentally due to an introduced species.  We humans are skilled at altering the balance of ecosystems.  Are we facing the next mass extinction?  Some say that we are.  Either way, we're still stripping the earth of her biodiversity at a frightening rate.

The colour of blood.  The blood of angry men.  The blood of forgiving women too.

The colour of blood, fire, and sacrifice.  Colours of the Salvation Army and of the crosses of the Jesus Army.  I wore my red cross with pride and with a love of God and of my church.  I wore it again a fortnight ago as I stood on the stage in the persona of a murderer.

The colour of a big book of Rumi and a small book by Mao.  After a thousand years Rumi is the most popular poet in the USA.  Will Mao be remembered in a thousand years?

The colour of the large boxes on my art room floor that hold no art, just bedding.  Practicality winning out over creativity.

The colour of the first chakra from where kundalini is said to rise.  I was once told that an attempt to do this is a veiled attempt to become unwittingly possessed by Satan.

The colour of Mars.  A question for H G Wells:  How big would a plume of gas rising from the surface of Mars have to be in order to be seen as a massive event with a nineteenth century telescope?  Wells cannot answer.  He is immortal only through his stories.



Orange

The colour of peace in Buddhist traditions.

The colour of a Joris liquorice box.  Those joyful zouts that have bought me many smiles.  On Friday I will meet a friend outside a liquorice shop.

The colour, unsurprisingly, of an orange.

The colour of a mobile phone company who had to think of a different advertising slogan for Ireland.  "The future's bright ... the future's Orange," would not have been appreciated by all the people.  In Lancashire a family attended the Baptist church for a while.  They were members of the Orange Order and they believed that to kill a Catholic was to do the will of God because Jesus said "an eye for an eye."  They were devoutly bowed down to the will of God.  Their version of it.  A version with little room for love or forgiveness.  A version that didn't even bother to listen when Jesus finished his "eye for an eye" sentence.  Another Gospel verse is perhaps truth here:  "Jesus wept."

The colour of the second chakra.  They say it's connected with sexuality.  They say it's connected with sexuality.  Then they say it again and again.  They very rarely speak of it as being connected with acceptance.  Acceptance is a much greater thing to talk of than sex.  People are sex obsessed.  I went to a stand up comedy evening last week.  Nearly everyone spoke in some detail about masturbation.  And then there was the man who talked about his granny "taking it up the ass."  I guess that's funny.  People laughed.  Perhaps, when I was fifteen, I'd have found it hilarious too.


Yellow

The colour of custard.  I am outnumbered in this house.  The only custard lover.  I grew up with custard and my mother named our cat "Arnold" after the (unofficial) system for measuring the thickness of custard, the "Lancelot."  It's a system unknown beyond our family.  The term came from my uncle and aunt.  There was always custard when we visited them.

The colour of cowardice.  Originally that meaning may have arisen from racism against Mexicans.  A problem that still continues.  It is acceptable to be racist against Mexicans.  My proof:  You can be racist against Mexicans and still be elected as President of the United States of America.  Were racism unacceptable he wouldn't just have been unelected he would have been barred from standing in the election at all.  In my world, racism isn't acceptable.  Do I live in the real world?

The colour of jaundice, of some bile, and of vanilla ice cream when it's full of artificial colourings.

The colour of a large book of short stories on the shelf of this art room.  I bought it a year ago, desperate to read the contents.  I haven't read them.  I haven't even read the contents page.

The colour of the third chakra.  Don't get kicked in the solar plexus.  It hurts.  Don't get punched there either.  Unless you have very strong, very prepared muscles.  Houdini was strong.  But unprepared.  He died and still hasn't turned up at the annual seance on the anniversary of his death.  Either he can't come back or he's having a laugh in the afterlife and staying away just to prove that mediumship is tosh, piffle and balderdash.  Much like the chakras may be.


Green

The colour of grass, the fields, of leaves.  Except when they're not green.  The colour of the village green except in a drought and in the centre of the cricket pitch.

The colour of money.  Douglas Adams made a joke about how most of our problems are related to green pieces of paper.  The green paper has been taken out of play.  Our problems persist.  Perhaps if I destroyed my pound note the world's problems would be solved.  I am told that the only legal tender in Scotland is - according to the letter of the law - the English pound note.  That seems to be an issue for Scotland.  Except it isn't.  Most money is an illusion.  World government debt stands at sixty trillion dollars.  Most of that money doesn't really exist.  It's a myth.  An invention.  And when there isn't enough mythological money the governments invent quantitive easing and invent some more money to borrow.  The question isn't who the money was borrowed from.  It's how they acquired so much money to lend out in the first place.

The colour of every internal wall of a house we lived in.  No more lime green walls please.

The colour of the back of the enemy of Danger Mouse.

The colour of the beginner.  Except in martial arts.

The colour of your fingers if you like gardening.

The colour of the fourth chakra, the heart.  It's love, it's joy, it's inner peace.

The colour of envy.  And nausea.



That's enough colours.
Today I am unwell.
And I have been nauseous since last night.
It does not comfort me to consider that when I am experiencing the colour of nausea I am experiencing the colour of joy.
I end tonight lacking in all comfort.
Except, as I wrote to a friend this morning, I have two dodos and a warthog.
Therefore life is good.

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