once in a very blue room

So what about a blue—

that is not indigo?

A blue you inadvertently conjure¹ by mixing strong samples from the paint store (where dogs are allowed to help you browse)—

—with rust-ridden cans of interior latex that have been languishing in the basement for years?

What about a blue that, while definitely not the blue of blue tape—

—is nevertheless a hue neither you, your dog—

nor your camera—²

—knows what to do with?

What about a blue that makes you inadvertently apparate³ from this land of dusty-ochre-baked-gold-brown-dark-green-at-least-right-now to an as-yet-unvisited-place-where-bright-saturated-color-is-an-everyday-thing—perhaps even Palouse by the Sea?

What then?

And what about another blue that is not quite the blue just described but rather a combination of that blue and a splash of lumpy-white-that-has-sat-too-long-without-being-stirred topped off with another scoop of basement grey —

—a mixture that, try as you might to make it smooth, still spreads cloud-like blobs across walls and feet and shows every stroke of the paint roller—

—a mish-mash of a blue mess so awful you decide to like it because after three days your hands ache like mad and anyway you and your dog are sick of the whole thing —

—a mess that is not quite so horrible after you pull off the blue tape even as you’re still pretty sure it’s a bad idea —

—a bad idea at any rate, until you spy the enamel bowl from which you once ate breakfast, lunch and dinner all those summers long ago —

—a bowl that was vigorously nibbled by a wee wilderness rodent (mouse? squirrel? chipmunk?) when one day you neglected to scrub off the oatmeal crust before heading out with shovel, Pulaski and knitting for a day’s trail work—

—a bowl that now contains the nails you pulled from the walls before beginning to paint—

— nails whose holes you neglected to fill because you’re a half-assed painter at best and anyway you didn’t really mean to be doing this and who has time for spackle when you just want to be back at your loom even though here you are with paint on your glasses—

—nails that are now staying in the bowl because the only thing this tiny windowless room seems to want on its new blue walls is a watercolor of Beavertail lighthouse your grandmother painted in 1956—

—a lighthouse from the place you spent your childhood summers and where the skies were often the misty code-switching blue of high humidity and scary sailing lessons in tiny blue boats with big grey waves—

—a code-switching blue that for all its fogginess still let light dance across the blue-grey floor of the shiny painted porch where you drank ginger ale and ate Fritos snitched from your grandmother’s pantry and where, after sailing lessons, you got to practice your knitting—

—knitting that has produced stacks of sweaters many of which are in this very blue room quietly reflecting the summer light up these newly blue walls which, though 3000 miles and fifty years away from that porch, suddenly smell like ginger ale and Fritos instead of paint—

—sweaters you keep knitting because they are your clothes and anyway knitting is elemental⁴ —

—as elemental as it feels to sit in your very blue room typing random nonsense with the help of a blue/green/grey machine—

— a machine that, though far from that porch and years from that camp in the woods was nonetheless made in 1956 (the same year as your grandmother’s watercolor and four years before you were born), and whose smooth black keys go clickety clack beneath your old lady fingers and echo around the almost empty walls in such a way that at this moment in a very blue room the day before a very blue moon,⁵ anything feels possible.

What about that blue?

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1. Honestly, I was just going to give the room a long overdue tidy-up—do a wee bit of sweeping, dusting and mopping before warping a loom. Really…

2. Photographing the color blue is a crazy experience, my phone shifting its perception of what is happening with every nuance of light, with every color that is near it, even (or so it seems), with my own moods and perceptions. It’s wild—and kind of fun. A real real photographer would probably know what to do about it — would make sure that your computer and my computer all saw the same blue. But what’s the fun of that? This way we can all conjure our own blues and see where they take us.

3. apparate From Latin apparātus;

verb neologism To appear (magically); to teleport to or from a place.

4. The difficulty with emptying out a room that holds a lot of things is that if you want to keep that room relatively spare, you have to find places for those other things—at least the ones you can’t bear to part with like your sweaters and underwear— and while you’re figuring it out you might was well stack the sweaters (in their zippered cloth bags with vinyl tops for moth protection and accessibility), at least temporarily, against the very blue walls where, I think, they may just stay.

5. With thanks and apologies and to the wondrous and late lamented Nanci Griffiths and her version of Once In A Very Blue Moon

And if I miss you, well, you know what they say ...
Just once ... in a very blue moon
Just once in a very blue moon
Just once ... in a very blue moon
And I feel one comin' on soon