Blue – Soul Colours

Colors of the Soul

‘Blue’ is the secret beauty of the past, and if it’s not my favorite color then I don’t know what is. It is a soul, like all the colors, and therefore yields itself through art and contemplation. I could wish to be a better artist and contemplator that I might learn from the mercy of its mind. Yet so much of its benevolence comes from concealment. The birds live their lives in the blue sky but spend most of their time searching for the pickings of the earth. Do they notice the medium they move in? – their eye is fixed elsewhere. Likewise the blue sea holds so many unpredictabilities and adventures – but they are arrived at through sailing and seeking not through the color itself. Is blue destined to be a background, concealing and enfolding, while red strikes through and yellow pierces? The answer can only be found by individuals who paint out of their own conception.

But I am using ‘blue’ with a special meaning here. It is the temporary cover for timeless secrets: a cloak, a binding, a motion. It allows me time to develop my contemplation and artistic skills. It provides a temporary shelter while I build the right balance between being intuitive and being purposeful. (Another duality I could wish to be better at.) But in the final analysis:

If ‘blue’ were a book it would be of old,
transcribed under the candle of spirit,
and everything it named would once have been.

Blue

If ‘blue’ were a person it might be mine,
meaning what a cloudless sky means to birds,
who live, nonetheless, in pickings of earth;
or suggesting the ocean’s treachery -
benign at noon, storm-blackened at midnight,
yet framing countless deepened adventures;
or rhapsodizing the true eyes of love,
discovered, possessed and lost all too soon,
immortal where memory’s pages curl.
If ‘blue’ were a person it might be mine,
a background, a cause and an impulsion -
a nature named in other worlds than this.

If ‘blue’ were a book it would be of old,
copied from ancient texts in gold and green,
with a single shaft of light where it lay.
Perhaps it would be history, perhaps
news, for nothing advances but it stands
still for the duration, gathering heart.
But if it were a story it would leap
from its bindings and walk in many coats,
concealing whispered pasts throughout the day.
If ‘blue’ were a book it would be of old,
transcribed under the candle of spirit,
and everything it named would once have been.

Best wishes, today,
Jay Landar

Picture: American Windows, by Marc Chagall

©Jay Landar 2013. All rights reserved
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