Colour me blind.

Music: ‘Retrospect for Life’ by Common

Colour: A veritable rainbow of vibrating energy

Mood: contemplative
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White.

It’s said to be the colour of purity. Untainted like white doves, baptisms, pouffy nuptial gowns, virginal silences and clandestine moments. Uncontaminated like the aura that peeks from behind the spiritually blessed encasing them in divinity. It’s also the light that leisurely sits upon the locks of angelic beings. In secular society – white is crisp and clean.

Unfortunately amongst all its unpolluted glory lay the smatterings of my personal truth: white is the absence of colour and to me it will always be, just that. In the religion of the blue god – the absence of colour is synonymous with the absence of life. Flat, barren and a footstep away from being extinct. White is the colour of purity for the soul’s right of passage – a mourner’s cocoon of sorrow. Worn relentlessly until it numbs the pain and life is reintroduced through swatches of colour.

White will always remind me of just that – the morning after my ammamma (grandma) passed away. The house sighed with heaviness as a village of people traipsed through its doors. All sheathed in variations of white – sari’s, salwars, linen shirts and the such – their sorrow worn for the world to see. She was gone. The shakthi (energy) that protected the house, the waves, the wishes and the clan had evaporated into thin air. And with her demise, white became the color of death. The colour of separation and the whittling away of our familial tribe.

Needless to say, my subconscious made the connection and it has stuck ever since then.

The world of retail therapy helped mask it with a band-aid of “must-have” white garments which I often over indulge in. White is now a double-edged sword – one side recalls the balmy sunshine of hot Indian summers and the other, impending doom. The irony of it all fascinates me. Colour is a powerful connector to childhood memories, it bleeds into the character one dons proudly and mostly it finger-paints its way into your solitary reveries.

Yet, when I was a toddler colour was merely another mode of finding one’s voice. All consuming yet subjective in its very essence – interpretations cast their own shadows upon impressionistic art. This premise was perhaps the underlying reason behind the quick demise of my fledgling career as a visual artist. I chose words instead. They were always more manageable, controllable and all mine (a possessive lil minnow eh?). The intention could never falter in the face of multiple interpretations. Nobody would leave their footprints on my words, nobody would dare to kill its spirit or ravish it’s soul.

That became my happy place.

And as age paints me with it’s unremitting brush, I’m forced to wonder if I will ever truly release those connectors. Or, if I will fall into the hollow depths of my fear and pass these scars on to the pitter-patter of little feet. I just pray that wisdom finds me and teaches me the much-needed lesson of letting go.

27 and still struggling with the burden of remembering too bloody much and not knowing how to forget any of it.
(Nietzsche would have a field day with this one)

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Brief synopsis of daily drama: I was spinning ideas and words until 11pm last night. At work and chugging along with trusty B by my side…I realized that regardless of how frustrating some days and some people can be – we are living the dream. And for this, we’re both eternally grateful to the powers that be.

As you might have construed from the little blurb above this one – I left my dates (all 60 of them) at the gym, hanging.
No phone call.
No email.
I just straight stood them up.

( yup, I think I just reserved my spot in hell)

So much for good intentions in the world of advertising.