Blue is Real
I don't want to analyze what is going on in the world. There just seems to be a lot of a lot of. People making music. People making up stories. People taking pictures, People looking at people.
Once my mother said to me, "Do you think the whole world revolves around you?'
And I didn't know what to say.
Because the idea of a ME has always felt strange.
Who am I anyway?
The people who say "Just be yourself." But I would think, hmm, if only I knew who that was supposed to be.
I was watching what girls do. I was watching boys. I was listening. But I was invisible.
"If you want to know what to say to someone ," my father would tell me. "Just ask them about themselves. Ask a lot of questions. People love to talk about themselves."
It did work. I got by. And it was better when no one asked me about myself.
I read about people. I learned that some people are shy. They think that when they talk, they are saying insignificant things that no one cares about. So they stop talking.
Now before you think this is a sad or self-pitying chronicle, stop yourself. Also stop yourself from thinking that people who don't know what to say to other people are ignorant.
They might be frightened. Or they might feel overwhelmed by everything they see and hear.
My conclusion was and still is that existence is weird. Having an identity, a life that begins and then ends: the thought of it still takes my breath away. Even the notion of ageing--think of decomposing a bit every day-- is so shocking.
I made a new person named Blue. She is shy. She listens. She cries when she hears about sad things that people tell her about. Things like losing a pet. Or a parent. Or a young girlfriend who mysteriously dies on the Oregon Pacific Crest Trail from dehydration and heat stroke. Too many sad things. The sad things are thin and fragile as butterfly wings, yet strong as they flutter in her heart.
Blue is real. Blue is the color of the sky when it feels like you could turn yourself into a balloon and rise high above it all. Blue is clear water, an ocean view. Blue is a loyalty color. Blue is the color of a warrior who remembers her ancestors.
Blue colors her face to remind herself of the daily tragedies, but also of the daily resurrections and the affirmations of true love.
The world does not revolve around her. No, it evolves around her.
She feels a freedom in losing her features in a color, in letting the passion of a song course through her body as she plays and sings. When she performs she is someone else. She travels somewhere.
These are Blue times. Blue is real. And the color continues to reveal.