After a brief flash of Winter, Spring spun through and around us, toppling rotted trees and otherwise reminding us how powerless we are in comparison to Nature. Today, the season seems to be an uncertain combination of the two, neither of which has sufficient motive to wrestle the other for superiority. The blend of grey skies, temperatures in the low 50s, and still air creates an atmosphere of dull weakness; a pervasive bleak and sullen detachment. A few scattered leaves are stuck to the driveway, the adhesive moisture of an almost invisible mist condemning them to stay right where they are if and until the environment changes. They have given up trying to be useful and lively. They are vestiges of a time when life filled the air with wind and aromatic conversations. There are no discussions between flowering plants and bees seeking pollen. A pall of indifference enshrouds everything in emptiness. The day is unsure of itself. It wants to slink back into the anonymity of night. But clouds prohibit darkness from allowing even starlight to piece the night skies. The day can move neither forward nor backward; it is in a catatonic state, paralyzed with anxiety about a future it cannot see and a past it cannot remember. There is only the present, an enigmatic anchor to now.
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The absence of bright color can be beautiful. In the right combinations and textures, shades of grey blended with muted hues of sage green and black and creamy beige produce serene images that amplify one’s sense of tranquility. But the hideous monotony of unstructured, pointless mixtures of emphatically dreary tints and tones and hues—it borders on chaotic. Oddly, though, the chaos is not necessarily turbulent. It distorts perception in a way, stretching it into smooth-edged fragments that fit together like a complex, precision-machined jigsaw puzzle. This perception is not automatic, though. Not natural. It requires a focused disengagement that takes practice and persistence. I remember the first time…I think…this thought came to my mind. I was riding in the car of an Amtrak train, somewhere in North Dakota, between St. Paul, Minnesota and White Fish, Montana. Mile after mile of almost identical desolate scenery that other passengers described as boring, with its its monochromatic palette and repetitious vegetation, became an image of chaotic magnetism, to me. Beyond its monotonous sameness, I finally was able to see the extraordinary beauty of that long strip of natural elegance. In the right frame of mind, it can be seen all around us; along railway freight switches, in strings of graffiti on highway overpasses, in automobile junk yards on the “seedy” side of towns. Even in seemingly never-ending chain link fences and scenes of hundreds of oilfield derricks protruding from barren stretches of tan sand.
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Despite my affinity for the color, grey, I recognize and appreciate the spectacular beauty and energy that resides, sometimes hidden, within brilliant colors. Yet I tend to favor greys over brighter colors except for accents. I suspect the reason for my attachment to greys is enhanced by my sense that greys are valued by fewer people than are reds and blues and greens and so forth. I value my commonality with relatively small subsets of people who share my tastes and interests including, of course, my preferences of colors. That concept—valuing what I identify as a unique characteristic by virtue of its commonality with a select groups of others—is an odd sort of contradiction. Seen clearly, without looking through the lens of pretentious snobbery, the concept clearly reveals arrogance. Even with that admission, though, I still find it true…and bizarre. Does it make sense for a person to attribute his uniqueness—his differences—by virtue of the extent to which he is like others? That is not differentiation; it is unearned conceit. When I think of other aspects of myself I find worthy of pride, due to their relative rarity in the population at large, I can’t help but laugh: attraction to spicy foods; admiration for multiculturalism; appreciation of multilingualism. I could go on and on, of course, but to do so would only worsen my image of myself as a boastful egotist who relies on self-delusion to prop up unwarranted pride of rare characteristics that are not necessarily common, but certainly not rare.
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Honesty frees and humiliates simultaneously. The truth can tear down walls that keep people apart, while bringing shame to the people who built them—and who lived behind them. Walls are made of both bricks and beliefs. Bricks are easier to dismantle.
