The Color of Today

I walked outside this morning just as the sun was lighting up the east. The sky above was a striking robin’s egg blue, but as the natural is want to do, the pale blue wasn’t pale, wasn’t surface. There was a translucence that harkened to something more.

It occurred to me, as I looked up and went through these thoughts, that it was the first time I had timed this moment perfectly - for it wasn’t long before that sky was white-washed, paler, less vivid. Nor was it long since the inky black stillness of space was holding the twinkling of stars. Then I thought about being in the moment. I vowed to wake up and notice a few more things, for the first time, from whatever was around me, during the rest of my day.

But first, the care and feeding of the girls.

* * * * *

As I set out on today’s adventure, I looked all around. Ever notice how painted-on colors are flat? How the inanimate is somehow duller that the animated? The black of a metal light pole, say, to the depth held within the coat of feathers of a black bird. Or the green of the plastic newspaper bins affixed to mailboxes around here to the iconic living green of, say, the shoots of daffodils and paperwhites poking up out of just thawing ground.

* * * * *

“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.” (Pablo Picasso)

* * * * *

Rain, rain mixed with snow, rain. Today finally gave way to sunshine, which helped me to notice how the sun side-lighting the empty tree branches turned their brown bark into a glowing amber. How the sun passing through the dogwood animated its orange-red twigs. How a red barn casts a blue shadow. How even the reflected light of the sun within my dark garage seemed somehow to glow.

* * * * *

In “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” Robert Frost has a line describing an April moment when air and sky has that certain feeling, but suddenly a cloud crosses the path of sun and a bitter little wind takes you back to March. Today there was the promise of warmth upon setting out, but there was the rebuff as well.

* * * * *

Can something as formless as sunlight, which in itself cannot be seen, in some small way reveal something beyond the form it illuminates?

On this walk I took, the life around me seemed more animated. The birds were louder, their numbers seemingly increased, their joy in being increased in measure by the feeling of that long awaited sun and the energy it suffused into their little lives.

That same light colored my walk today. Its shimmer, its essence, its celestial lightness is the color of this day as I walk the same route as yesterday, yet see as if for the first time.