A Letter to Lemon Yellow, Ruby Red, Forest Green, and Cobalt Blue

 

My dear friends of the Rainbow,

I have addressed this letter to you in particular, but my desire is for all your friends and relations in the rainbow to hear me out for a few minutes. I love you dearly, from the first chunky eight of you I held in my chubby hands to the impressive 128 deluxe version with names we mispronounced but delighted in: magenta, puce, turquoise, wisteria, and fuchsia. Oh you are a multitudinous treasure to behold. 

Today I would like to say how much I love orange. Plain simple old orange. Please, don’t take offence when I tell you how precious orange is. I love you all. Some of you have been standing out in brilliant ways for millennia and getting quite a lot of attention: Blue, heavens, you have the sky in every hue you choose to wear. Green, my goodness, you’ve got photosynthesis going for you after all. Almost anything with a leaf is going to have a smudge of green somewhere. Let’s face it, some of you have a wide palette and massive family.

Orange has a number of relatives, but today I was thinking about how orange plays her role. Think about construction workers: their orange vests, orange helmets, and orange cones all remind us to take care. Orange is the colour for caution and care. But unless we’re talking about traffic signs or constructions sites, she doesn’t usually get first billing. She frequently ends up as a complement to someone more visible. 

But what a complement she can be. Where would autumn be without orange? We need her orange leaves among the browns and reds and golds. We glory in carving orange pumpkins to wear an orange flame and create a weird flickering face. We can’t forget orange chrysanthemums to bring a sparkle into the dying longer and darker days. What would a fireplace be without those streaks of orange in the flame? Or imagine a sunset that had to make do with all the other colours but without orange and her family for contrast. 

I think about orange every now and then because I have an original and quirky nephew who is colourblind in an interesting way. He cannot differentiate among most colours, but he can see orange. When he was married, his sweet and thoughtful bride, although definitely a woman on the cooler side of the spectrum: blues and lavenders, remembered orange. And right in amongst the blue and white flowers of her bouquet nestled a bright orange flower so her sweetheart could see it. And he wore an orange tie. It is pretty much his whole rainbow.

So please, dear glamorous, brilliant, and showy friends, when someone says “let’s hear it for orange” or “orange matters”, don’t make the fallacious assumption that suddenly you all don’t matter and no one cares about you. Of course you matter. You always have. Saying that orange has significance today is not to undermine yours. It’s a way to celebrate orange and see what she brings to the world of light.

After all, every last one of you is really only a reflection. Our human eyes don’t “see” you, we have light receptors in our eyes which communicate with our brains and we then get sensations of colour. In fact, the things we look at are not colours as you think of yourselves. The surface of the things we look at reflect the light of some colours and absorb the other colours. We see an apple as red or green depending on which light is reflected and which is absorbed. In an extremely simplistic sense, you are pretty much just reflected light in our brains.

So let there be no competition among you. You are all part of an amazing spectrum, quite a bit of which we humans cannot even see with our light receptors. When we delight in one colour, it is not at the expense of the others. 

Just bask in the light and get on with it.

A Letter to Alexei Navalny

 

Dear Sir:

Until a few days ago, I had not heard of you nor was I aware of the significant role you play in keeping Russia a country where people can hear the other side of the story.  The news of your suspected poisoning in an airport and the emergency landing of the plane to rush you to a hospital in Siberia was graphic enough to penetrate the networks here in America where we tend to be more interested in local news or foreign experiences of our own people. 

Your recovery is very important and I sincerely hope and pray that you will be restored to your family and the courageous work you are doing on behalf of your people. It is encouraging to know that you are being well taken care of with the best of doctors; I am grateful that the German government reached out to fly you to their own facilities where your wife will feel more confident of the outcome. May your recovery be swift and there be no long lasting repercussions.

This letter has a two-fold purpose: to salute you and thank you. 

Sir, I salute you for the decisions you made in your life which brought you to this dangerous situation, lying in a coma in a foreign land with the cause of your illness suspect. After doing some research on your reputation, I see you are willing to make difficult choices which have serious consequences. You could have left Russia in disillusionment and frustration. Continually waging battles against an overwhelming giant is exhausting. But whether for love of country or compassion for the people, you elected to stay in a dangerous life. You put yourself in harm’s way, but without the uniform and gun of which soldiers have advantage. You chose words as your weapon and transparency as your strategy. It has made you exceedingly unpopular with the leadership of the land.

You have been attacked before, a green acidic chemical was thrown into your face causing burns and eye damage. You have been arrested and detained multiple times, I guess you were interrogated as well. Threatening letters, legal attacks, having your private emails posted on line, and being in Kremlin cross-hairs pretty much sums up your life now. You knew the hazards and you have a family: two great excuses for you to choose an alternate career. One in which your talent, charisma and thinking skills could have been personally profitable and secure.

Which brings me to my second purpose: Thank You.

You chose to model risk and self-sacrifice to benefit the people of your country. It obviously hasn’t been convenient or lucrative for you. Nevertheless, you persist in calling out corruption and oppression. I am from a country founded by people who understood self sacrifice. Our patriotic forefathers paid a high price for American freedom. But we have come a long way since then. We have a saying: Freedom isn’t free. But the average American doesn’t have to look at the price tag anymore. We expect our military to pay the bill and we pay them to put their lives on the line. 

Meanwhile, we wallow in our freedom. We insist on it, even at others’ expense. We resent or moan or complain about wearing uncomfortable masks during a pandemic spread by air transmission. Some of us even claim wearing a mask violates our Constitutional rights, which would mean that in our hierarchy of values, the Constitution rates somewhat higher than “love your neighbour”. We have been known to resist social distancing, claiming it conspires to undermine our freedoms: to worship, to drink together, and even to attend massive motorcycle rallies without worrying about the next guy.

Sir, you are the kind of person I would want for a friend. You are the kind of person I would want for a countryman. Your willingness to stand in the gap for your people, to help them know what they need to know, to hold your leaders to account—these are valuable gifts to your country. We need your kind of people here in America. As the world holds its collective breath, hoping and praying that you make it out of this crisis, know that you have made a difference. You are a model for all of us. 

Thank you and blessings on you. 

Tradition and Reflection

Taking Portugal at a walking pace is comfortable and enlightening. This is a land to be ambled or strolled--and always savoured. Business and progress do not seem as urgent as greetings and cafe conversations. Or the past.

A pilgrim en route to Santiago de Compostela

Our path is enriched by reminders from the histories and legends swirling around St James' remains and the courageous, curious holy people who hoped to understand some of the impossibilities of life. It's sobering to think that at moments we are in their physical footprints. Steps they took without paths, roads, cafes, credit cards, and albergues.  Surely other moments we muse through their metaphysical steps--the journey is ongoing and unpredictable. The journey is being human. 

An immigrant memorialised at Castelo de Neiva

Reflecting on the very long ago and far away saints has a mystic quality. They seemed as much part of the next world then as they are now: living at the liminal edge of this material world and the needs of flesh and bones. Looking at the granite immigrant who represents the thousands fleeing war and oppression, a pattern of desperation-driven sacrifice emerges. No matter that those people fled a mere century ago: their stories parallel ours when we step out the door and have no clue where the day and path will take us; even as they parallel the cloak and staff pilgrims of the Middle Ages. 

We seek. We get distracted. Sometimes we push through. But for me, not often enough. I long for my seeking to be soul-sustaining. For my will to prove true and the way to prevail over distractions or whatever would prevent me from finally finding my way home. 

On Camino

We have been walking for a week now. We arrived in Lisboa and took the train up to Porto. It was a flash from our past. Twenty nine years and a couple months ago we arrived in Portgual to learn a most complex and gratifying language. One our teachers claimed was "dead" because it did not change. 

After nine months we continued on to Moçambique where we integrated our language skills into those of a colonised and presumably liberated people. We missed quite a lot on our first time here: dedicated to conquering a language to engage a people. In the shuffle, we somewhat missed the Portuguese themselves. 

This journey has been delightfully different. Now we speak their language, albeit with an African accent. We are practically welcomed back to family and encouraged and blessed now by the very colonisers we overlooked before. Our distant goals blinded us to closer treasure. 

This trip I am seeing this amazing people with new eyes. Before I saw their backward focus: everything pointed to their former glory days, the explorers. Now I grasp how important their heritage is. But I run ahead. That will come. 

Today I celebrate their appreciation of cats. Every city has a feline community, Portuguese have a special relationship with them which the cats understand. These cats are friendly. The shortest street in Porto has the largest cat mural I have ever seen.  Painted by Liqen, a Galician artist, this Blue Cat is inscrutable and enchanting. He has a frayed computer cord in his mouth and a bemused smile. Butterflies flit around him. He sits on a discarded motherboard and is either carrying a medieval city on his back or it nestles in the backdrop. His titanic paws are solid, yet the foreground is strewn with debris--a skull, even. And a random gondolier poles his barge of--is it pottery--across the cat's chest. 

I expect the cat to mysteriously wink at any moment. He's Portuguese, after all, and knows he is   important in the grand scheme. Whimsy brings ordinary things to new light. A truly Portuguese trait. 

Sunset at 7:58

I sift the sand for poems

and scan the waves for dreams--

as the sun with salmon tresses

sinks blind between the seams

of day and night and dusk descends

and mountains at my back ring round

the pinkish purple skylight blends

and augurs coming dawn

Wave Walking in three parts

i.

Tightly together two stand as

one against the surf,

a surf too mild 

for such unity:

his arm circles her shoulder,

clasps his hand on the other—

she leans into him, a hand

in his back pocket.

Sidelong close

her right, his left legs blend

thighs knit, knees lock.

Looking out where sea meets sky,

muted couple—not young or old

in middle years, why

do they feel taut,

straining to breathe?

what have they lost or won:

a child—a cancer—a curse?

Behind I softly circum-

navigate them in their

“only two”ness,

their unknown tomorrow

they walk into together.

ii

Further on a smaller couple,

look-alikes, but she’s taller, 

hands interlocked and raised for

gentle waves greeting.

Laughing, crouching, jumping 

almost

together to defeat

the bright benign surf.

Together, you two,

keep holding those hands:

create a habit to save his life or 

hers or yours—

Laugh, jump, celebrate

the tide of life

it’s ebb and flow.

iii

And now in the rocky shallows

strewn with grittier sand and

kelp artistically splayed

she poses poised in

a white nothingness to enhance

bronze bareness.

She flings blonde tresses with artless grace

face upturned

to sun, then the 

downward sultry pout

and turn again, hand on hip,

knee raised, back bent,

hand to lip, to back of head—

All the while the ragged-haired men

with camera and lights

plod in the murky water

clicking, turning, focusing, almost kneeling;

who’s directing this 

liturgy of worship, 

praise to human sexuality?

Is she priestess—

acolytes follow with

candles and incense 

or goddess— 

she moves languidly,

provocatively 

for adoration, 

or offering—

evocation, supplication.

out of the shallows into shadows,

on the grainy beach,

she changes vestments and 

continues familiar ritual dances

for a faceless congregation 

in cyber-space

Wings

If I had wings I soon would be

soaring swiftly out to sea--

scanning horizons for a whale

upon whose back I'd gladly sail.