Photo by Ron Morecraft
My husband Ron and I ventured out yesterday to one of the many local antique/flea market venues, hoping for a safe, socially distant, adventure in shopping for nothing. As I perused potential end tables, and fantasized about a $700 antique, five foot tall iron weathervane featuring a sculpture of a young boy holding a globe, I realized Ron was missing.
I found him bent over a bucket, grabbing a shiny, green Christmas ornament made of countless glittering, green plastic “things” plunged into a Styrofoam ball. I accused him of being like a crow, endlessly enamored with shiny objects. “But it’s so green,” he murmured, as he let it go.
Since his cataract surgery, Ron’s relationship with light and color has undergone a metamorphosis. As a photographer obsessed with light and color before, I now often catch him simply staring at an object, murmuring, “It’s so blue, or it’s so bright!”
I was speaking to a client who happened to be an ophthalmologist. He explained that our natural lens actually has a UV filter in its fibers, but the replacement lens doesn’t. “Why?” I asked. “UV light is blue. So they tried to create a lens with a blue filter in it to protect from UV damage. Unfortunately, it caused depression.”
Well, suddenly, having the blues took on a whole new meaning. Elvis began singing “Blue Christmas” in my head. From there I went to “seeing red,” rolling “in the pink” and of course, being “green with envy.” (Although I would venture to guess that has something to do with the movement of bile, rather than something Grinchy.)
Could how we receive the vibrations of light be a key to understanding our emotions? In all the articles I read, not one really addressed our real reasons for having these color associations outside of certain cultural ideas (pink for girls, orange for Halloween.) One site would offer blue as a calming color, but another site would say too long in blue is depressing. But no one mentioned why.
If, as David Bohm famously said, all matter In the universe is frozen light, then the color of my skin, my hair, my heart is simply a certain resonance with the vibration of light moving through me.
In this season where those of us in the North watch the light weaken as those in the South welcome the light, I invite you to look inside and see what colors are in your inner vision? What do you see on the inside of your eyelids? As you cast your attention through yourself, what color are the insides of your arms, your torso, your legs? Take a moment to imagine, that yes, you too are crystallized light finding its manifestation here and now in this strange and yet portentous time.