vignette: blue, blue

Truism: people in cities never look up. Take the time to observe and you’ll see that this is no exaggeration. Everyday, millions of people wake up, get in cars or trains or buses, with their PDAs or papers or coffee, eyes on the road, on the words, or perhaps unfocused on a point just before their feet or to left of the person seated opposite. Anywhere but up.

“Because the sky is terrifying,” the old man who hawks secondhand Taiwanese computer parts once told me. “It’s too blue, too true.”

I think he’s right. That truthful hue is something that belongs to the sky and to the sky alone. It is absent in Gap, missing in the United Colors of Benneton and a confusing number in Pantone, textile or otherwise.

There is a blue that cannot lie, that foretells a day that can be rapturous or fraught with melancholia, possibilities unfolding like irrepressible blossoms, exploding and rushing away to define the faint horizon.

Underneath that blue, blue sky, one day, I met you.