Six miles.
Things that Are Grey.
It has been raining all night. At six-thirty in the morning when I head north to my marsh pond, it still rains.
It is a grey day. The scene before me feels sketched and shaded with the grey charcoal pencil I keep in my journal. It’s the mysterious side of black, the silver of the moon’s changing shapes hiding behind grey clouds.
Rain taps the grey road like clattering workboots on the ground. Running through loamy grey puddles, my shoes become wet and spray water like startled gravel.
I run straight up the steep grey hill in Lincoln Park once again to my hummingbird pond, and even more amber pine needles have fallen and form a thicker mat on the ground, softening the high impact of my run, saving my joints for yet another rainy day. The grey rain has intensified the color of these pine needles to a strong harvest pumpkin orange. Even tree trunks, both stout and slim, look grey and slump-shouldered, though here and there I see a vine of crimson ivy winding down rocks like blood streaming from a broken lip. At the top, rain stipples the polished surface of the pond. Squirrels still scamper and scratch in their preparation work, their reddened fur tinged grey, and ducks trundle about. Stepping to the water’s edge, I look down and imagine I see my own reflection in the silvery-grey tones of a mirror.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who is the fairest fair of all?
I hold my breath as I do not want to disturb clotted silence with an unconsecrated word.
~~~
It was not easy to lace up those running shoes on this grey morning. The Harvest Lady’s rain does not entice me to lie down in its grey-drenched green grass like the invitation of Summer’s warm streams. Still, I close my grey-green eyes. Feel the rain on my skin and imagine I am under Falls of water which enters me drop by drop, cell by cell, joining the air in my blood's river like sap running through the body of a tree.
~~~
Suddenly, it feels important for me to remember, to acknowledge and honor grey as an essential element of the human experience. That while grey is said to be a balanced neutral color seldom evoking strong emotion, to me it does. To me, it is a strong, mysterious color of moods with gradations of shades that change as much as variations of reds, yellows, and oranges, from the complex and noble charcoal to the simple grey of the pencil I use to write. Reminds me I am a sentient being, and those around me need me to be my genuine self in grey just as much as in color.
I need for me to be my own genuine self in color and in grey.
Breaking the ritual silence, my breath comes easily, unforced.
~~~
Grey is the color of iron, the smell of life’s blood force, and steel, the metal of strength supporting words of comfort and encouragement.
The color of the sunrise still hidden in ribbons of misty-grey fog.
Of loosened winds over water and the grey path where my stride takes me.
The silver-grey of the shining crescent moon.
Of blue and black stones, grey and shadowy, and the silver jewelry I prefer over gold.
My grey temples that the colorist in my favorite hair salon has convinced me looks striking with the highlights she gives me.
Grey, the color of my favorite glitter (though I like them all), a jar of which spilled when its lid loosened in my purse a few months ago. “Toss the purse,” a friend said. But I delighted in the cloud-like magical poof that mushroomed each time I pulled my wallet out at the supermarket checkstand.
~~~
I pull out my long grey scarf and my glitter-striped black and grey tights that I will wear today beneath the folds of my long black skirt and my sparkling paisley Danskos. I shall not only wear the three silver chains I love with my favorite silver pendants of trees and fairies, I shall also add a long, knotted string of pearls in yellow, white, and grey (when I am not working). I shall don silver bracelets and rings and spray myself with silvery glitter.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who is the fairest fair of all?
I am who I am.
Today I am grey.
I bow.
Today, I shall HONOR grey.
GL, 10/14/2009. Prevail.
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Striking. Guess I never really dwelt much on grey. Now that I consider it perhaps the ozone smell just after a thunderstorm is grey. And a mirror?
ReplyDeleteFavorite image: clotted silence. Brilliant.
Your greyness is delightful! Again, so much fun to read.
ReplyDeleteGrey--the only way for Red to hold hands with Green, Yellow to partake of Purple and Orange to melt into Blue. Thank goodness for that no man's land, that peace that is the perfect background for everything, that way of knowing that discerns both sides, bedrock that doesn't have to even have a name or be anything special.
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