White

Colors

WHITE is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing.

God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. - Gilbert K. Chesterton

I'm thinking about all the interior landscaping style and colors I loved before. 

I had a blue Ming period, a green jade era, a short-lived Crazy Moroccan vibe, a Mariachi streak with an extra helping of red-hot, Vintage Victorian, and many others.

But lately, I've become friends with white as well as khaki and neutrals accented with black. (You may remember the story of the onset of my lunacy with white in last December's entry entitled, Pure As The Driven Snow.) 

That's why when I looked out the window in the early morning that day, my heart skipped a beat when I spotted a sliver of fluttering white darting and dancing across the vining Virginia Creeper.

Do you remember I said white was my fav color? 

It was a white butterfly.

I was fascinated because there were not a lot of these albino-like winged insects around. I could tell that it had just wakened to life after the sleep of darkness. Now, it was floating and moving in the air, flying upon the wings of its own spirit.

Some of my friends said that white signified death. Please tell me you don't believe that. 

Oh, good. I don't either.

I saw purity, beauty, innocence, freedom, spiritual growth, and wisdom in that white butterfly. Remember Chrysalis? (Its parent movement is the UMC Walk to Emmaus, for those not in-the-know.)

It wasn't symbolic of the absence of color, but a beacon that signified the confluence of all colors.

It uplifted.

It affirmed.

Life is like a box of crayons. 

With the lovely and, at the same time, furious red of emotions vying for primacy.

With the inky dark of a bleak night when it seems like there's nothing. Always nothing.

With the riotous motley hues of small things which, together, create great things.

With a golden sunrise that gives you the feeling of having just wakened from a spell that is meant to last forever.

And with the immaculate purity of a tomorrow that comes shining with purpose and miracles. 

Such are life's colorful passages. It’s all in the shades and tint of the moment.

Yellow

Colors

YELLOW is the eldest daughter of light. - Charles Blanc

When I was young, I thought yellow was the most beautiful color on the planet. When Mum would ask me what color fabric to buy at the Divisoria textile mart for my new dress, I'd say, Dilaw. Yellow.

All.The.Time.

I think it was because it was bright.

Joyous.

Sparkling.

Which is why I'm doing 'yellow' today, CBS-style. You know, where the show features just a slice of life. Nothing fancy. Just an image.

So, here goes.

Are you game? 

Let me take you once more on a túk túk ride in the walled city of Old Delhi in India (you may remember one such ride featured ­­­in last year's October entry).

Just visualize it.

An unending, gilded aura of yellow marigolds embracing the lovely, merciless sun pouring through an immense skylight, shaped like a dome. The street is so laden with flowers making the city look like it is outlined in gold, or that it has caught fire. 

Turbaned vendors presiding over huge baskets of flowers are meticulously stringing them into garlands, love charms, and various ornamentation.

Wonderful creatures marigolds are.

Festooned on market stalls and doorways, they nod hello to the swarm of people hurrying by. In front of stores and vehicles, what seem to be hundreds of them reach for the sky, their faces lifted in ecstasy. Their heads quiver over balconies and on building facades, filling shadowed corners with an acrid, clinging scent. 

In the Birla Temple, devotees offer them alongside namaz prayers to gods wearing red lipstick and with multiple arms.

Don't you just love all that shining fluorescence?

That explosion of radiance and orange decorating the road in bright colors with no apparent theme other than vividness.

That amazing light pooling across, swept up like a wizard's broad paintbrush to varnish all the buildings in a beautiful golden haze.

That seeming chaos, brilliant and showy.

It makes me feel as if a tiny seed filled with magic had taken root and is flourishing like infinite blossoms inside of me. 

This sparkling and yellow slice of life. 

   

A Motley Masterpiece

Colors

This Father's Day, I fondly remember one of Dadee's motley artwork.

Sometimes, all you need is a little splash of color. - Unknown

Dadee was making a Filipiniana drawing for my fifth grade Social Studies class. You know - one with a nipa hut, rice field, a farmer, a mountain for background, and a carabao.

Koloran mo pag tapos na, ha? Can you color it in after it's all done? I was chattering away like a bird as I handed him my 16-count Crayola box. 

Sige, tulog ka na. Go to bed now. I'll do it. His mild voice was reasonable and final.

Bright and early the next morning, racing against a chorus of manic dogs running about, I ran to the kitchen table. Dadee always delivered, so I was excited.

Are you curious?  Do you want to see what it looks like?

Oh, good. 

Ta-da! Can you chime in with an opinion? You certainly can't ignore its exuberant burst of color, right?

The sky looked like a mad painter's canvas, as if halfway through, the artist decided against blue and splashed ochre and crimson on the palette. Silhouetted against it was a bright yellow-orange kite being flown by a farmer with an orange sambalilo hat.The land was purple and lush, the blue grass rippling in the breeze. Rays of sunlight were stretching violet fingers across the top of an orange-colored nipa hut. Lazily ambling back and forth over lumps of hard clay, breaking it down so that a new field could be made, was a carnation-pink water buffalo.

I broke into a cackle of a laugh. 

The entire scenery was a sprawling expanse of divergent colors, like the dawning of the world. I couldn't wait to bring it to school. I couldn't wait to be the talk of the fifth grade class.

The years seem almost a blank now, like the strange calm patches you sometimes get in a cloudy sky, a moment of waiting, of forgetfulness. But there are things I never really forget.

Not for a moment.

Not that unique work of art that Dadee created with every ounce of passion in his heart.

For me, it easily gets first prize in the Filipiniana art awards. And just between us, doesn't it look like a shoo-in for display at the museum of contemporary art? I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Because it's perfect.

Because it's one-of-a-kind.

Every single discordant and quirky detail becomes front and center in my mind every time I think about it. I become ten years old again, on the cusp of all the possibility and wonder and good things in the world.

And I feel, as I did then, that the future, clad in motley colors, has just brightened even more.­

Black

Colors

There's something about BLACK. You feel hidden away in it. - Georgia O'Keeffe

Have you ever walked on a black sand beach? Our family did just that when we first traveled to Hawaii several years ago.

Today, I went back. 

Because Punalu’u, the most famous black sand beach on the Big Island is a sight to behold.

Because there's nothing like it in the world.

And because I need to do penance.

Mother Pele, I have sinned. I took not just a handful of black sand, but a huge lava rock from this very beach on that first visit. 

I know what you are thinking. I can hear you loud and clear. You are raising your eyebrows and shaking your head and asking, Why?

Well, at the time, I didn't know. Only after it had sat on a side table back home on the mainland did I learn that taking any of the sand away was kapu, forbidden, and that bad luck would come upon its purloiner. According to legend, the Hawaiian goddess Pele viewed these rocks as her 'children,' and she would punish anyone who took them away from her. 

Never doubt the legends of the jungle, a native-born Hawaiian kama`aina admonished us. I had to do something to deflect any forthcoming misfortune. 

I know. I'm ashamed. I shouldn't have and I'm very sorry. 

In a most ungallant decision ever, I hastily set my lava rock outside on the ledge of the fence farthest from our house, facing the neighbor's, and abandoned it there.

So near the shore, Hubby and I sat on the sand, the way children or old people do. Endangered hawksbill and large, green honu turtles were basking in the sun. A crab ran sideways at my feet. Sitting there, I contemplated how the black sand formed after a millennia or more of the rough surf pounding on the spilled, bubbling molten lava flow from the active Mauna Loa and Kilauea volcanoes. 

There it sat. In the rain and the mist and the dirt and the hot sun and the wind.

Day after day.

All those years.

All that time.

And now? It had evolved into the most glorious, glistening ebony color blanketing the shore.

I just wanted to touch it one more time, so I cupped a handful. How mysteriously poetic its black color was! It felt cool in my hands. I sifted the sand, unwilling to be held, and with absent fingers, let it spill freely.

As I timidly stared underfoot at the pitch-black granules glistening in the sunlight, I whispered, E kala mai i a`u. Forgive me, I'm sorry. With that, my hope was that all would be right with the world and between Pele and me.

My footsteps were dragging as we left. Black sand gave way to shallow water, then finally to waves cascading toward the shore. 

Red

Colors

This series features some of the colors of my life, of feeling, of articulation.

The long sorrow of the color RED... - Naomi Shihab Nye

I'm thinking about an exciting trip I’ve had before.

This one is code red, sort of, and can go all Dante's Peak (look it up on Netflix) where the inhabitants fight to survive a volcanic eruption.

Have I given you enough of a hint?

Are you ready?

Are you set?

Hubby and I have just settled in a rustic inn at the foot of the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica. It's actually deceptively peaceful. I can hear the croo-ak of the frogs and the chirping crickets.

But out the window, silhouetted against the darkness, is the most uncanny view I'd ever seen - the glowing summit of a cone-shaped mountain looming large and ominous at 5,437 feet over the pastured green hillsides that surround its base. 

Surreal, isn't it?

Scorching red lava is flowing down its sides scattering tiny points of fiery brightness. It looks like a phosphorescent rivulet gliding and burning through the darkness. Plumes of ash are rising from its pinnacle. It's like the rupture of fireworks bursting defiantly over the land. You can't miss it, even if you are out and about and down the street. 

By bike.

By car.

By rocket ship?

I bet you can see it from outer space. Or maybe not.

Guess what I'm thinking? We're crazy to be here. 

Arenal has remained the country’s most active volcano for the past 43 years with an average of 41 eruptions per day. Yes, being here may not be such a good idea.

I stare at it, speechless. My mouth opens and shuts and opens again without squeezing out a single word. And would you believe what we dared to do at daylight the following day? We hiked closer to the foot of the rumbling giant. 

Nuts, right?

We can feel it. It's restless, alive, smelling like sulfur. With our every footstep, I seem to hear Death walking with us, chuckling softly in its throat. It's shapeless yet it hangs over everything. It's grinning, yet joyless and hollow-eyed.

Death the insatiable.

Death the implacable.

We shouldn't be here.

I can call to mind the story of the 87 or so people who were trapped underneath its ashes in a previous eruption, the quiet lament from the three small villages buried below.

Something is tumbling around in my mind. I'm playing, What if? What if the most powerful disaster of all is awaiting us, just around the corner?

Today.

Or in our sleep.

Tomorrow, perhaps?

The one that will be written about in poems and odes and all the missing third verses of hymns everywhere.

The one that will be passed down from generation to generation in hushed tones and whispers.

It has been nothing but a day of ill winds and the sorrow of an eternally-sizzling red-hot fire.

We should get out of here.

Spoiler alert: We managed to not kill ourselves on this trip.