Observations on the Sky

do colors change shape?

On colors: A. gifted me twelve oil pastels. They are the perfect colors for a coastal town: soft pinks, soft blues, a blood red, multiple greens, a perfect yellow. I am missing a lot of colors, but I feel like I have everything anyway. I could do a lot with twelve.

More on colors: I called my mother on the way home from work today to tell her about the color of the sky. The other morning it was so blue that it looked like summer—that perfect ocean over the lawn in July. Nature handed me nostalgia. I told her about being eight years old even though she was there, too.

I am seeing color. Pies, skies, pastels on my desk, happy pi day. It is spring. I tasted rhubarb today, rhubarb brown sugar pie. The sun is a nonliving thing. I learned new things. Ruby grapefruits come from gamma radiation. There is a creature called a honey possum; it has a long nose, it’s like a bee or a bat in the way that it pollinates, accidentally brushing up against the future of what we bear. We bring chance around with us like gods, but we are small and then die. Tiny mortal gods.

The sun sets pastel tonight. Soft blue, all sorts of green, the golden yellow. I meant to write this in the dark this morning, I meant to climb a mountain, I meant to share. I didn’t do that, but I can tell you about the color of the sky. I can tell you about my shortcomings.

…

At the end of the continent, the sky still rolls over blue. It is indigo now. On the other side of the continent, the day has already formed. Here the birds are up, not minding the cold or the dark. I am up and minding. The candle is lit like a small moon. I turn the light off so that both the moon and candle can do their job.

I woke up early enough to just catch the indigo. The sky is rolling. In the time I’ve typed and deleted and put a tray of ginger cookies in the oven and oatmeal on the stovetop, the sky has turned over. I bet the indigo has reached the Pacific ocean now, or maybe the islands west of here. The morning birds keep on.

A. sent me pastels because they miss moss town. The colors match this town now, the edge of everything town, the rolling indigo town.

I’ve been feeling a lot lately: anger, contentment, exhaustion, love. Still, the morning birds keep on. I can’t get over that. How everything keeps going on, time passing us, colors more or less the same. Something happens, you’re changed, and everything moves on but the sky. So it seems. And then you think about it, about being eight, and maybe it was in fact different. Maybe the sky was different. No way to be sure about anything.

Just some observations. Have you seen this color before?