Primary Colors
Brown. Not espresso, or beige or caramel or sienna or any of those lovely shades. Just brown. Dead. Dry.
That's what I observed as we drove to Fort Worth on I-20 Tuesday. Bleak and dusty brown. So brown that the primary colors of the road signs were vivid beacons against the landscape -- red and blue Interstate markers, green mile markers and "Next Exit" signs to Strawn and Gordon and Stephenville, yellow yield signs and caution signs. Even the orange warnings that "traffic fines double when workers are present"were a welcome visual break as I calculated whether 70 or 75 was a safer risk when said workers seemed nowhere to be seen.
I know. Green and orange are secondary colors. Still, all the signs in a road sign coloring book could be colored using just the eight crayons in the basic Crayola box, with the purple left untouched.
When I was growing up in Colorado I thought of January as a white month. We didn't always have snow for Christmas, but we always had snow in January. Not sleet. Not ice. Not a wintry mix or freezing rain. Snow. Snow we could play in, snow my parents could drive on without sliding, snow my friends and I could ski through and stop in spraying glittering powder against the bright blue of the sky, and the vivid green of the pines. White.
In West Texas, the white signs announce the speed limit, and black and white state trooper trucks enforce it.
Michael slept all the way to Fort Worth. The pain of the migraine that had plagued him for nine days, and still remains today on day 13, only eases while he sleeps. Every waking moment is marked by pain. And so with no radio to keep me entertained I passed the time by searching for colors in the landscape and mentally reciting the hymns of prayer that have soothed my soul on other brown days.
"Father and friend, thy light, thy love, beaming through all thy works we see."
Really, even in these brown, dead works?
"Father hear the prayer we offer, nor for ease that prayer shall be."
Good thing. Ease seems hard to come by this week.
"Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways . . . . Take from our souls the strain and stress and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy Peace."
Please. Peace.
That's what I observed as we drove to Fort Worth on I-20 Tuesday. Bleak and dusty brown. So brown that the primary colors of the road signs were vivid beacons against the landscape -- red and blue Interstate markers, green mile markers and "Next Exit" signs to Strawn and Gordon and Stephenville, yellow yield signs and caution signs. Even the orange warnings that "traffic fines double when workers are present"were a welcome visual break as I calculated whether 70 or 75 was a safer risk when said workers seemed nowhere to be seen.
I know. Green and orange are secondary colors. Still, all the signs in a road sign coloring book could be colored using just the eight crayons in the basic Crayola box, with the purple left untouched.
When I was growing up in Colorado I thought of January as a white month. We didn't always have snow for Christmas, but we always had snow in January. Not sleet. Not ice. Not a wintry mix or freezing rain. Snow. Snow we could play in, snow my parents could drive on without sliding, snow my friends and I could ski through and stop in spraying glittering powder against the bright blue of the sky, and the vivid green of the pines. White.
In West Texas, the white signs announce the speed limit, and black and white state trooper trucks enforce it.
Michael slept all the way to Fort Worth. The pain of the migraine that had plagued him for nine days, and still remains today on day 13, only eases while he sleeps. Every waking moment is marked by pain. And so with no radio to keep me entertained I passed the time by searching for colors in the landscape and mentally reciting the hymns of prayer that have soothed my soul on other brown days.
"Father and friend, thy light, thy love, beaming through all thy works we see."
Really, even in these brown, dead works?
"Father hear the prayer we offer, nor for ease that prayer shall be."
Good thing. Ease seems hard to come by this week.
"Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways . . . . Take from our souls the strain and stress and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy Peace."
Please. Peace.
Labels: hymns, migraine, West Texas
posted by Cheryl | 2:24 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for directing me to your blog -- and it was great to run into you. Reading your posts made me realize that I've never really read anything you've written. I've only seen you in editing mode, not writing mode. This is a nice change.
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