i had to do a double-triple take when, trekking in the countryside around florence, i saw this stripe of yellow. was it spray paint? perhaps some overspray from a road striping truck? it was that hue of yellow. but what was even more surreal was the other, alive, collaborative artist in a matching hue, just as stunning. the two in fact were both alive: the first yellow coming from a very unusually bright lichen living and painting itself onto the stone-- natural graffiti. unbelievable color match.
when you start to paint, you start to notice the differences in color all around you, especially in the natural world. ordinary life's manufactured objects don't quite inspire that kind of attention and gobsmackedness. but as soon as you're outside, even if it's just glancing sneaking-in bits of nature popping up in defiance of concrete constructions like dandilions pushing up through pavement cracks, or the sky overhead peaking around buildings as you weave through city streets, while learning to paint, you suddenly drop into a new vocabulary gleaned from the colorful tubes you squirt out powerful new pigments from. and the ways you are learning to mix them, appreciate and perceive their subtlety, how they shift and glow differently, lead you slowly to know that in fact there is no such thing as "yellow".
instead, you come to learn, and start to feel right there in your body, that there is cool yellow and warm yellow, muddy yellow and earthy yellow, intense yellow, opaque and saturated, and then squeezing out a pile of the tangy-tart-looking lemon, you experience a bright but thin yellow, easy to dilute into nothingness or creamy meringue-ness, and transparent.
you learn that yellow has so many ways to show up and be, so many names. cadmium yellow even comes in dark, medium, or light. yellow ochre. naples yellow. indian yellow.
and so now, when you look at this moment on the stones and the flower in front of it, you see yellow in a way that is no longer a way to label and move on, as if yes, "yellow", you've seen that before.
your brain, your eyes, your heart light up as you look, and you gaze deeper, and fall into this yellow which now takes up all of your attention, consumes your entire visual field and saturates, sinks into all of your capacity to perceive. it then seems to soak into and onto your mental stage, and your attention is all yellow. on the stripe on the wall, you see: bright, clean, intense-rich cadmium yellow medium with a hint of cadmium yellow light, some touches of light, semi-transparent lemon yellow, and the yellows you can almost, almost taste!
so, no longer does a one-stop-shop "yellow" exist for you. instead, this heretofore seemingly simple primary has become an entrancing, capitivating, unknown thing capable of provoking you to expand and gaze into, live into, it, you holding still while it surrounds your eyes. and it's then you realize that it has happened: you have seemed to have grown a new pair of eyes.
that's why you will stop and gaze, as if in a trance, and find delight, while others hurridly gallop past to somewhere else, see nothing worth stopping for.
you will begin to recognize yourself in the child who is doing the same thing as they walk down the street, and then also in the dog who stops, sniffs, and greets everyone and everything with enthusiasm and eager energy, like running into an old and dear or making a new friend with every small moment.
then you will be asked jokingly by people you know (like amused students who have not yet themselves opened these second sets of eyes, or better, their original ones), "what are you on?!"
and you will answer, sincerely, with a chuckle, "life".
or, in this case, "yellow."
