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The Color Blue
by Hally Dang
i.true blue
"As yellow is always accompanied with light, so it may be said that blue still brings a principle of darkness with it. This colour has a peculiar and almost indescribable effect on the eye. As a hue it is powerful, but it is on the negative side, and in its highest purity is, as it were, a stimulating negation. Its appearance, then, is a kind of contradiction between excitement and repose."
from Theory of Colours, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as translated by Charles Eastlake
ii. April is the cruelest month
It was raining like this on the day she left. February ended with snowstorms and March came in showers of rain. The morning was dismal; a bitter cold clung to the air. Dawn was dampened by the chill of a light drizzle of rain.
I couldn't quite place the exact events of that morning. It was a muddle of memories too fragmented and intermittent to be sensible. I suppose she had packed the night before; left the ring on the table. She had said goodbye over coffee. Things have a way of working out the way they do. I knew. Of course, I knew.
She had disappeared into the gray white mist, into the turbid fog which had settle upon the snow and rain.
I've never noticed how ridiculously big this house was, how dreadfully hollow it could be at night. When I woke up in the morning, I swear, I swear I could still feel the cool of her red hair pressed against me.
I would see her sometimes; her shadow tucked inside the spaces the light can't get to. When April sneaked it's way into the air, her presence still lingered here like the winter.
It was a haze of scarlet and white, cold and bitter. It hung, heavy and stagnant, thick as the fog that took her. Sometimes, it was hard to breath; it all stung like salt water.
iii. under the twinkle of a fading star
I'd dream of her, sometimes, just a brief flash of red among the darkness. I've been saturated with her: her scent, her warmth. I just wanted to reach out and find her there. I just wanted to feel her again.
I couldn't stand the deafening silence of this house. I still had her portrait on my bedside table.
Spring was thick in the air with thunderstorms and bird songs. I was a bit lost within it all.
I was not broken. I was not bitter. I wasn't anything at all. I wasn't anything at all. But I knew every curve of her face. I knew exactly the way she smelled. I still had a little bit of her taste in my mouth; still a little bit of her left with my doubts; still a little bit of her ghost in this place.
I wondered, sometimes, where she was now; if she was happy now; if she had found another man to love. Was he taller? Older? Was he everything she wanted? Was he more than what I could ever be?
iv. like bursts in the violet air
I don't know why, but she came to me with the summer morning. She came to my door and took me into her arms, the way Kaho used to do. I was wrapped up in red, wrapped up in someone else. But she didn't seem to mind at all.
She watched me with those great amethyst eyes as she pulled away. There was no judgement there, no sympathy. Because she had been here before. She knew what despair was.
"Don't build your world around volcanoes, Eriol-kun," she told me. "Volcanoes melt you down." She was mysterious that way.
"Tomoyo-chan, there is not a volcano around London for thousands of miles," I had replied with a weak laugh.
She wasn't fooled one bit but she smiled nonetheless--it blinded me.
She was dark lavender and velvet like rich red Italian wine. She brought with her a soft, blazing glow. And I felt warm.
v. in my end is my beginning
August was heavy, covered in rain. The air was smoldering, like ashes of roses, and wet. The garden flowers were wilting after too many stormy nights and scorching humid days.
I couldn't help but notice how heartbreakingly sad she was. She was decaying with the garden flowers beneath the summer heat. She hid it well, that darkness in her eyes. Yet there was this tenacity and intensity in her which I could not place.
I've lost a part of me when Kaho left; I died a little. But she possessed something which I had never achieved. So when the flowers faded, she never lost herself.
She was smiling again--God, she didn't know how beautiful she was when she smiled.
"All things wither and die, Eriol-kun. It is how we know we are alive; life is ephemeral so we treasure it. Because rebirth only follows decadence." Her voice was strident and unlit.
I knew then that she had been broken beyond repair; she had always been broken. She was here to be broken for the both of us.
vi. hush November
When the first snow came down, it seemed as if heaven had suddenly fallen down on the earth in a million pieces of brilliant white. It was everywhere; it was everything.
She took me outside in the morning, trekking through the thick snow with her long black overcoat covering her footprints. The sky was so very blue that morning. It was bright outside; I wasn't used to the light.
She dropped herself down among the snow. Her dark swirling locks made tremendously fantastic patterns against the white. Her skin was pale like antique Victorian china dolls. She fitted there, welded in the snow and motionless.
She wasn't real; she wasn't earthly at all.
She had plopped herself down like a broken angel on the ground. The vivid blue of the sky was reflected in her eyes. Oh, I saw heaven in her eyes and its beauty was staggering.
For moments, I thought her eyes were blue--the shade of blue of the universe after the first snowstorm; after the fall.
I don't understand her at all. She was smiling with the saddest tears--I swear they were blue too--in her blue eyes. She laughed, a dark and crystal laugh. She pulled me down to her and told me that everything was beautiful now.
Everything was beautiful now.
Author's Notes: This story seemed to have written itself. I meant it in the beginning as a dramatic monologue of Eriol. He was suppose to outline the end of his relationship with Kaho and then his falling in love with Tomoyo. It was suppose to be a portrait of his character, his personality, his strength and weaknesses.
Well, I suppose few things in life turn out the way we plan them. This simple character portrait refused to be itself and transformed into this great long winded portrait of pain, letting go, and moving on. I'm not quite sure what role Tomoyo plays in Eriol's journey. She becomes the vehicle from which he learns the greatest truths of love. She was the facilitator for his learning of himself.
Forgive me for the jarring religious allusions in "hush November" and the overall confusion of all five sections. I'm not sure how these six sections fit together, but they do have a terrible closure to itself. The color blue becomes this great symbol of infinite love and forgiveness in the end. Tomoyo's the never ceasing forgiver and protector; she is "broken" because of her immense ability to forgive.
Tomoyo's eyes are not really blue, of course. The color of the sky is reflected in them, making the illusion of their blueness. In the end, I'm not quite sure if this is Tomoyo's portrait or Eriol's. Enjoy this great mess of words. They make sense somehow.
Section titles are excerpts from T. S. Eliot peoms: The Waste Land, The Four Quartets, The Hollow Men. "hush November" taken from a Frost poem. Volcano theme taken from a Damien Rice song of the same name, Volcanoes--wonderful song, by the way.
Have you ever noticed how utterly blue the sky is the morning after a great snowstorm in winter? How utterly pure and clear everything can be on a morning like that?
Please review before you leave. Thank you for reading.
Revision April 20, 2005: Changed formatting. Edited AN, now includes a list of references.
Revision April 22, 2005: Few minor changes to text.