inner art journal

Primary Colors

I always look for the primary colors that inform the color of any thing. The cherry floor of my office is red with tones of gold and soft brown. I review the indigo, white, black and wine in my oriental rugs as these colors dance tight arrangements of joy and prayer. The multiplicity of the colors in the rugs warm then shatter the room. In conversation, too, I look for colors. The person speaking has a color. Many, really. But I am looking for the hidden color, the one the person himself doesn’t know about. Found under sadness, or anger, or circular repetitions of thought, the person’s hidden color is teased from the blur of muddy experience. This color pops like the red in my floor from grain lines and brown. Familiar, like a friend, I see primary colors revealed in their eyes; no, past their eyes, past their talk.

a flicker of gold
on the side of the mountain~
brief reversal
dark sky, light earth
dancing spirit

Color is a yoga pose. Steady breath and gaze centered by the command deep within. Deeper than the person, deeper than the day, deeper than the life that lives like a wave moving toward shore. The crash is joyous and dreadful, the color of water elusive. My eyes are steady. Perception draws the line from ocean to shore.

movement
no movement
color no color
the ballet of water
slaps hard land

My uncle was the nice one. Favored by my grandmother for his sweetness, he lies in bed now, the final days of his life. I contemplate the gift that I could send him. Primary colors. The lucidity of spirit-blue, the flame of insight-saffron gold. Maybe he would want green life, turbulent and frightening, or the red heart of hunger. I will give him the color of water. Water when it is still and vast, love when it is depthless. Primary Emptiness. The peace that astonishes.

land on this shore
frightened one
I hold you
for minutes and years
in a flash of wonder

glass windows
reflect a moving city
our evenings together
fade with time
within me

in the moon light
a voice calls me –
listening
I hear that
it is my own