kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"roygbiv"

words

ROYGBIV

Beginnings and endings are difficult beasts. Why does everything start with red? Bloodshot eyes stare at a rising sun, each a reflection of the other's soul. What does he see in the sun? Nothing. The midnight oil of his mind has burnt dry, leaving the untended wick but smoking ashes.

Thoughts he has, but he isn't thinking. One by one by two by two they tick off and roll about. He's lost the will to follow any, to try to make sense of even the smallest one. He's lost the will to keep them back, to focus on any given line. He focuses on the sun, and wishes for the moon.

The moon has not been hidden by the dawning day as of yet, but its thoughts are quiet and unobtrusive. In day the moon is secret, at most a surprised look or two, fugitive from the light but not afraid. There is no real contest between these opposite entities.

The aggressive sun consents the night to the moon. While beast, it knows a thing or two. Without counterpart, its lore would be far weaker. The sun, however, is not thinking, nor is it having thoughts. It is simply staring deep into the retina of a single man. For a moment at least. Who is to say what a moment of the sun is.

Blood is pounding and settling, pounding and settling in unsettling harmonics with his heart. For a moment, his heart stops. What is that moment? In that moment, the sun seizes one truth from his soul. In that moment, the moon, spectral observer, glimpses that truth without understanding. In that moment, he loses consciousness.

What is a beginning? He slumps back, hitting his head on two heavily fluffed pillows. The wind dies down and his hands and arms and chest instinctively tighten the sleeping bag around him, entering the womb. Atop his apartment complex's flat roof, the tar desert, his heart starts and calms. As the sun showers the earth with newfound truth, he begins to sleep.

Why do things begin with red? Red eyes to red sun, red blood to the blood of another, the earth. The sleeping earth. Red magma is the center of our mother. What is red? Red is nothing but one limit of our visual spectrum! But as we exist, it is more than that, unless you wish to say we are no more than the sum of our physical parts, your thoughts, your existence the mere afterimage of some god's brain -- the universe. As we choose to think we exist -- red is more than one limit of our visual spectrum.

Red is in fact, sticking to scientific guns, one fourth of our retina's perceptive ability. One sixth, if you wish to count the rods, but one rarely counts the rods. They are outcasts, belonging to the night and the dreams of sheep. Do they know the moon? Are they, perhaps, a part of the truth that the sun has stolen? Are they, perhaps, a part of the truth that is even now waking the earth for the first time since she gave birth to the moon? Who will be seeing red?



He is not seeing red. He doesn't dream in color, though if his dreams had color these would not be red. Almost. Orange. Orange is the bursting of the sun's rays through his scarcely protecting eyelids. Orange is such a vague color. Warning? He is beyond warning. Perhaps last night, or was it two nights ago? A week? A very long day, however it is counted. Perhaps then he could have been warned.

Who? Who could have warned him of what would pass? The seed was in him, or a part of it was. The soil was about him. None could have put two and two together -- or if you believe in such, then none could have prevented it. The all-knowing stops existing. Perhaps the observer makes the universe but that perspective leads to naught but profound nothing. Nobody, then.

But what of a celestial body? The moon was orange just a week ago. Did she know? What could she have known? Perhaps she felt a stirring in her tides, a twitch or two, a school of fish reflecting time to come.

Warnings of both sun and moon, unheeded; unnoticed. If even either were such.

Our dreamer dreams.



Yellow wakes his mouth to cotton. Orange has faded, the sun is high, the hour late, or early. Early afternoon. His body, neglected for an indeterminate amount of time, has had its better portion reclaimed by clouds. He stirs, thrusting off the protective sleeping bag, and pushes himself up. A becalmed day. No respite.

With determined effort he wrenches his tongue free of the roof of his mouth, kneels, stands, and wobbles. His sense of balance is off. Did it go with the truth the sun stole? Or is the moon trying to get his attention? What can she tell him of this truth she saw for a fleeting celestial moment? Are his rods playing tricks on him, firing movement in his periphery? Could they truly be in tune with the moon? The yellow approaches white and drives him inside, to liquid. Shelter for the ape.

Where does yellow come as caution? Cowardliness? Fear? From the gods, perhaps. The lustery rays of the sun bore down upon the ancestors of our friend, and they worshipped -- for they were afraid. Moths drawn to the flame would be burnt, yet would draw near again. Caution cannot be taught, only nodded to. Have we collectively nodded? Are we dreaming? I am.

With shelter the ape seeks solace. He tosses the pillows and sleeping bag on a couch and proceeds to the sink. He pours himself a glass of water, adds a yellow powder to it, and swirls it around with his finger. This finger finds its unconscious way into his mouth, where he suckles for a moment.

He wipes his finger on his leg, expecting to find the jeans he'd just discarded. Shrugging, he drains the glass of lemon electrolytes, and repeats. Twice. Finally, enough fluid has entered his system that he removes himself to the bathroom. A long, painful, saturated yellow stream reprimands him for not partaking of water regularly enough. It trickles down, and shaking off the dregs he walks back to the kitchen and pours himself a fourth glass, which he sips upon.

His head still hurts. Imbalances of equilibrium assail him as his body attempts to make do with the tide of liquid he's forcefully injected. His ears pop repeatedly and his temples throb.

"Was it worth it?" he asks himself, in an ethereal voice.

Even now, he doesn't quite seem to exist.

"I remember."

Does he? Was the truth not stolen, only copied? Can such a truth as that exist in more than one place at a time?

"I think I remember."

Can he hear me? He certainly has more influence on me that he can imagine. As do you. Perhaps both of you will understand at the end.

"I don't remember."

Alas. A silver tear ekes its way from his left eye. The right corner of his left eye drips a precious fluid. Will the moon somehow remind him? He lifts his wrist to wipe away the tear and remembers staring at the sun, wishing for sleep. Sleep? It hadn't quite been sleep that was on his mind. The thoughts that had been having him had long tired of the thought of sleep and had moved on to more symbolic things. It is too early for him. The day is bright and yellow and frightening.

"Was it worth it?" he asks himself.

The apartment is a solar-powered oven and he feels his sanity becoming a crisp golden brown. He remembers a kaleidoscopic fractal landscipe, spiraling out of control in complete safety.

"That alone was worth it," he nods to himself. "But there was more, I'm sure."

He opens the windows and door, heedless of his nakedness, puts his large fan in the doorway and turns it on full blast. Its high energy whine combats the yellow throb, blades slice through the doldrums and push them outside. He falls onto a couch, next to his pillows and sleeping bag, and waits to awaken.



An hour passes, or two. His thoughts stumble over eachother languidly, not sure if they wish to be woken now, not sure if they want to jostle to the top, to the forefront of his consciousness, or if they want to jostle to the back, back to sleep. Which are greener pastures? For an hour or two, sleep must be. Not a single thought braves the way to the top of his recently overused cranium.

The first thought, then, to make a solid statement in his skull this relative morning, sets his direction for the rest of the day. It's interesting to note that this thought doesn't simply stumble up to the top, resigned to make its voice known. This particular thought had been deep asleep, untroubled by the indicisiveness of its neighbors until it was well and fully rested. Once it awoke, it trod straight up, spreading new life behind it. This thought was crisp and green in the sort that a dollar bill can never understand.

It shouts. Not too loud, understanding of his head at the moment, but it gets his attention and then slowly increases its volume. As it loudens, he becomes more and more able to cope with it. Energy tip taps gently on the follicle of every hair on his body, hinting at goosebumps but not... quite.

The shout is not the yellow roar of the sun. It is a trill -- excitement. Time to awake and away. Green pastures abound, but elsewhere.

He dresses minimally, appending the previously discarded bluejeans to his body, and strolls outside. It is now warm, no longer the oppressive stifling heat of dehydration.

Green grass is such a cliche. Of course, you rarely see it any color but that or a dying yellow cum brown. Attempting to reverse the scale? It's never red. Where do colors go when they go? To the brown of the soil, as colors ought. Colors destroyed by the yellow of the sun, at least. And from the soil... green. Sometimes. What else is green? Trees are green and brown. Seas and oceans often hint at such a hue. Spring, of course, is green, and go. Go!

He runs outside, bolts downstairs, and wriggles his toes in the grass. It's a start.

"It's a start. But if I stop, the start will be gone. Momentum, but momentum with variation. I'll check mail while I'm down here."

He's starting to think, but the moon is at its anti zenith, the silvery sleeper is sleeping.

Fumbling for his keys, he heads to the mailbox. He notices the fact that his keys are not currently in his jeans and shrugs. Presuming they're where he usually leaves them, he races up the stairs, swings playfully into his doorway, and grasps -- they're there. Back down the stairs his feet careen for the sheer joy of motion after the hellish winter of the morning, and he leaps for the pole and twirls around it and continues -

"Aren't you a little old for that?" she scolds.

He looks at her and looks at himself and looks around as if trying to piece together her complaint and his current reality. "Too old to enjoy life, ma'am?"

"You know what I mean," she states, certain of herself... and her reality. She's old, and proper. She's never known anything but blue, the fading blue skipping indigo and straight through violet to ... wherever colors go that go that direction. Or so she thinks. She was green once. She yells at her children and teaches them to be dead as she is dead, as she was taught.

"I see," he mutters, not seeing at all.

He's lost in the fields of green. He mutters just loud enough to attempt to sound... somehow recalcitrant and apologetic and proper and the things he thinks she's looking for, while in reality all she's really looking for is a place to vent her anger at the world, but she lets him pass, muttering her own mutterings.

He steps spryly to the mailbox, but now it's forced. He can't quite find the proper dynamic balance of the step. Sighing, he opens the box and sees that he's received no mail.

"No junk mail's good junk mail, I always say," he mumbles to himself.

He doesn't always say that. In fact, he's never said it before, but that passes him by completely. The burst of energy has left him -- it was not prepared for the onslought.

His neighbor shuffles back into her hovel, and shuts the door loudly. It echoes in his mind. The moon is slowly closer.



A ringing, a finger slowly dragged around the rim of a glass. Blue. Blue, but lacking purity -- clamoring clarity grates on his nerves.

"Bitch."

Quietly, though. He doesn't want a bird to hear him besmirch her and run back with the news -- any fight she has, she wins, for she fights for the fights. He traipses back to his apartment, and shuts the screen door.

Again on the couch with his pillows and sleeping bag, he feels himself drawn down. He clenches his teeth and makes for the kitchen. On the way, he notices his last glass of fluid and tosses it deep down his throat, putting it then down by the stove and refilling a kettle for tea, which he begins to heat.

His eyes are attracted to the blue flame of the stove, and he settles down in a chair to stare at it. Blue flame. Blue flame is hotter and more controlled than yellow, or red. More intense. An intense memory is trying to wiggle its way into his head through the crescent shapes of the blue flames of the gas burner. What is blue? Where is blue? Blue doesn't really exist, does it? The sky -- is refraction from the sun. Water is reflection from the sky. Blueberries? Aren't. Blue is purple minus red, red minus purple. It isn't.

Blue created from yellow? Maybe there's part of a truth in there.



Indigo. Meditation on a flame. Blue fades into a deeper shade of negative.



Throaty whistling shakes him up a level of consciousness. He is tranced. He is thinking. He is. He feels the moon. The moon. The moon has a question for him. He drops a pinch of darjeeling into his cup, following it with steaming water. The stove is off.

Five minutes are an instant after which he filters the leaves and tosses them into the trash.

The moon has a question. "Do you know the truth? Do you know a truth? The end of this. The beginning. It begins in red. It ends in red. A riddle. Yours."

You? Who are you? It begins to dawn? The warmth of the tea flows down his throat adding a reddish twist to the end. Where did this red come from? It was not in the brown of the leaves, the blue of the flame, the silver of the kettle. Was it? Was it in the silver of the kettle? The moon held this slice of red for you until you could take it back. With your firm grasp, the sun lets go. A truth can, after all, only be in one place.

I relax back to dreamless sleep. You slowly wake from... your dream. With the taste of a gentle cup of darjeeling permeating.