Green

No. 6

After some quietude I am writing again, but departing from the usual letters, I decided to revisit a colour board series I began on Instagram a while ago. Colour is my lifeblood, which does not run crimson through my veins but radical technicolour. Without it, I am soup-like and muddy, born of bog and with neither inspiration nor imagination. This may account for my listless Mountain winter state these past months, days on end of swirling white fog taking a fair toll, tightening its arms around my neck with a sly pearly smile, acrid breath on my pallid cheek. I am not a colour purist and consider white as part of the spectrum (albeit the achromatic culmination of wavelengths), but I nevertheless feel a sensorial absence in it, an uneasy leaching void quite unlike the intensity of emotion that hues of cobalt or chartreuse evoke in me. Colour is wildly subjective, and synesthesia - the mixed perception of senses manifested as a uniquely personal experience - ups the game: The uncontrollable laughter of saffron yellow or the sharp intake of arctic blue breath felt as an icy wind on the skin. The taste of salty grey on the tongue or the sweet satiation of violet is fodder for the eyes, fragrant spices for the mind, and umami for the soul.

A life spent working with flowers has taught me never to underestimate an unassuming roadside bloom because, despite appearances, they can pack the biggest chromatic punch. Here’s looking at you wild chicory, far more than the sum of your humble blue-petalled parts - luminous, radiant and heart-flutteringly pure. It is, as they say, the quiet ones you have to watch. Colour has the knack of elevating the prosaic to a sublime experience: a rush hour sunset glimpsed above a concrete skyline can bring us to our knees with its holy fire, in awe at a thing so numinous in beauty. Colour is fast and fearless, shockingly visceral and elegantly transcendent.

These boards are the product of day upon day of snow-crusted late winter landscape, sodden hueless plant material and thick, greasy mud. I am craving Green. My hungry eyes scoured books and the web for stimulus, snatching moments on tea breaks or waiting for the pasta water to boil. Yellow? Nope. Too crude and insulting in this colour-starved state, I scrolled quickly onwards. Purple? Emphatically no! Not for me the magenta of a throbbing black eye or the heliotrope richness of a meal eaten too late at night, requiring the cool hue of peppermint tea to settle the stomach. Only Green would do - an emerald sigh of relief for my wintered soul, an encouraging mossy hand on the back. “I am what you are looking for”, Green seemed to say with a viridian wink in his (momentarily surprising) West country accent of my imagination. “You fancy yourself as a sunset seeker; follow me towards the horizon, and let us find the flash that bears my name”. Well then. Who could resist an offer like that?

Green is the compass point towards that shimmering horizon. Green is the moment of clarity as the needle ceases to tremble on the colour wheel, settling True North. Green for balance sought and boundaries held, for the deepening of self and mysteries unveiled, proffered shyly in a sweaty, green-ink-stained palm. Green is the integrity of our existence extracted from the green of our hearts, pulsing slowly in the ecstatic green night. Green for the everyday and everyday mastery; green for shocking revelations and the leftovers of Hope after White is done with it. Green for the climb and green for the leap, and green for the ballet of life choreographed in our youth, slowing to the gentle green sway of our ageing hips. Green is the intimate laughter between friends, and green is the steady, unwavering gaze we hold as words go unsaid. Green for spirit, deeply rooted in the green mycelial dark; green for prophecy and wisdom hard (l)earned; green for the brazen and raw unfettered genius of truth. Green is the paradigm we leave behind in search of our true nature - in search of Green - that other shade of ourselves. Green is the vista revealing we are what we seek, and green is the carpet we walk on, sinking deep into the green grassroots of ourselves. Green is the child we were, who grew into Blue or Silver or Brown; green is the colour we long to return to, the hue of embodiment - the verdancy of us, the growth of us, the greatness in us. Green are the dreams in which we meet, green is the aventurine vision we share, and green is the mark left behind, the jade spectre of time. Green is for cell work, for soul work, for edge work. Green, not gold, is the ratio; green is the spiral that leads us onwards, upwards, through and around; and green is the curtain we draw back to reveal the origin. Green for glory and green for prayer, green carries the message, the secret and the code. Green is the spark, the errand and the goal, and green is the pen that writes in my name. Green is the Foolish Fire as we dance above the swamp, it is green that we whisper as we lead our loved ones home.

What is Green to you? I invite you to consider it next time you walk in nature, peruse the paint charts in your local DIY store or stroll to the fruit and vegetable stall at the market. Colours are seldom what we think they are, they reveal themselves in the faces of the ones we love, a fleeting bird song, or the feel of soft spring rain on our skin.

I will give the final word to Kermit the Frog, that enduring bastion of greenness whose reminder that “Green can be cool and friendly-like” and “Big like a mountain” calls me back to this mountain as I sit by the wood stove, looking out at still-dreary slopes soon to be transformed by Spring’s green march from the valley floor, now carpeted in crocus and sweet dewy grass. It might not be easy being green, but if it is good enough for chlorophyll and the colour of chameleons’ pyjamas (they are green or brown when they chill out), it is good enough for me.

It's not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the colour of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow, or gold
Or something much more colourful like that

It's not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over
'Cause you're not standing out
Like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky

But green's the colour of spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like a mountain
Or important like a river
Or tall like a tree

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why
But why wonder why wonder
I am green, and it'll do fine
It's beautiful, and I think it's what I want to be