March 2010 Archives

“And he saw a youth approaching,
Dressed in garments green and yellow,
Coming through the purple twilight,
Through the splendour of the sunset;
Plumes of green bent o’er his forehead,
And his hair was soft and golden.”

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Hiawatha; a poem”, 1855.

“Westward, westward, Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapours,
Sailed into the dusk of evening.

Thus departed Hiawatha,
Hiawatha the Beloved,
In the glory of the sunset,
In the purple mists of evening,
To the regions of the home-wind . . .
To the land of the Hereafter!”

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Hiawatha; a poem”, 1855.

‘It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater’

—Sheb Wooley, ‘The Purple People Eater’, 1958.

“He felt too handsome and smooth in his yellow Miata, like a birthday cake candle, irrelevant to the moment.”

—Barry Hannah, “The Vision of Esther by Clem”, 1993.

“It was three in the afternoon, a time Clem had never been fond of, but Esther drew all nature to herself, green, yellow and blue light, and threw back a calming beam from the beige of her face at him.”

—Barry Hannah, “The Vision of Esther by Clem”, 1993.

“There was no reason not to love you, fool. A handsome doctor wanting to paint, with black hair like a poet’s, if poets look like anything anymore.”

—Barry Hannah, “The Vision of Esther by Clem”, 1993.

“Fans of Ota’s running man point to two key advantages: It’s a pictogram, and it’s green. The sign’s wordlessness means it can be understood even by people who don’t speak the local language. And the green color, they argue, just makes sense. Green is the color of safety, a color that means go the world over.”

—Julia Turner, The Secret Language of Signs, Slate, March 1, 2010.

“Eigengrau (German: ‘intrinsic gray’), also called Eigenlicht (‘intrinsic light’), dark light, or brain gray, is the color seen by the eye in perfect darkness. Even in the absence of light, some action potentials are still sent along the optic nerve, causing the sensation of a uniform dark gray color.
    Eigengrau is perceived as lighter than a black object in normal lighting conditions, because contrast is more important to the visual system than absolute brightness. For example, the night sky looks darker than eigengrau because of the contrast provided by the stars.”

—Wikipedia.

“The storm left with the silence of a vacuum and a green sky overhead.”

—Barry Hannah, Boomerang, 1989.

“The sun comes up like a purple diamond.”

—Barry Hannah, Boomerang, 1989.

“wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.”

—Pablo Neruda, “It is born”.

“For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?”

—John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, 1962.

“I put on clean clothes and went out with him into the star-raddled night. And the Aurora Borealis was out. I’ve seen it only a few times in my life. It hung and moved with majesty in folds like an infinite traveler upstage in an infinite theater. In colors of rose and lavender and purple it moved and pulsed against the night, and the frost-sharpened stars shone through it.”

—John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, 1962.

“The climate changed quickly to cold and the the trees burst into color, the reds and yellows you can’t believe. It isn’t only color but a glowing, as though the leaves gobbled the light of the autumn sun and then released it slowly. There’s a quality of fire in these colors.”

—John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, 1962.

“I took one companion on my journey—an old French gentleman poodle known as Charley. . . . He is a very big poodle, of a color called bleu, and he is blue when he is clean.”

—John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, 1962.

“Maya the queen . . .
Dreamed a strange dream; dreamed that a star from heaven—
Splendid, six-rayed, in colour rosy-pearl,
Whereof the token was an Elephant
Six-tusked, and white as milk of Kamadhuk—
Shot through the void; and, shining into her,
Entered her womb upon the right.”

—Buddha’s conception, Sir Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia, 1879; Symbols of Transformation, C.G. Jung, 1956.

“I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
    And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
    And upon her forehead was a name written: Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.”

—The New Testament, Revelations (17:1); Symbols of Transformation, C.G. Jung, 1956.

“Look up:
There roll the star-strewn seas,
Night, stillness, deathly silent roar!
Behold, a sign:
Slowly, from endless space.
A glittering constellation floats towards me.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche, “Glory and Eternity”; Symbols of Transformation, C.G. Jung, 1956.

“But the light I see is not local, but is everywhere, and brighter far than the cloud which supports the sun. I can in no way know the form of this light, just as I cannot see the sun’s disc entire. But in this light I see at times, though not often, another light which is called by me the living light, but when and in what manner I see this I do not know how to say. And when I see it all weariness and need is lifted from me, and all at once I feel like a simple girls and not like an old woman.”

—Hildegarde of Bingen (1100–1178); Symbols of Transformation, C.G. Jung, 1956.