On my last class of my first semester of grad school, I heard the same phrase (in so many different words) that I’ve heard all term, “I feel sorry for how robbed you are of this experience.”
As I write this I’m looking through my collection of polaroids. It is Christmas and there are only 6 days left of 2020. I am still unpacking (in all of the literal and figurative ways you can imagine) from both an international move last summer and the many tragedies of this infamous year.
These polaroids, a timeline of: pictures, portraits and portals are a color code of what can be pictured and not pictured.
Yes, you should always have multiple pairs of scissors
Mary Ruefle color codes sadness in her book, “My Private Property.” Blue, purple, gray, black, green, yellow, orange, red, brown, pink, white. In no particular order they are each their own sadness.
Gray sadness is the sadness of paper clips and rubber bands, of rain and squirrels and chewing gum, ointments and unguents and movie theatres. Gray sadness is the most common of all sadnesses, it is the saddness of sand in the desert and sand on the beach, the sadness of keys in a pocket, cans on a shelf, hair in a comb, dry-cleaning, and raisins. Gray sadness is beautiful, but not to be confused with the beauty of blue sadness, which is irreplaceable. Sad to say, gray sadness is replaceable, it can be replaced daily, it is the sadness of a melting snowman in a snowstorm.
p. 46, Mary Ruefle, “My Private Property”
Yet (spoiler alert) hidden in the last sentence of the last page under acknowledgements, Ruefle also notes, very slyly, that the word happiness can be substituted for the word sadness and nothing changes.
How does this work?
Is gray sadness the same as gray happiness?
I’ll try.
Gray happiness is the same sadness as an invisible horizon line- sea becoming sky and sky becoming sea. It is ferris wheels on rainy days and second hand buildings selling second hand chances. It is the questions you ask yourself when you are watching strangers shop. Which people donate the chances and which people take them? Gray sadness is the same happiness as the gate blocking your view of the city at the top of the historical Rundetaarn (round tower) observatory.
It is the gray patch of paint used to hide graffiti that resembles the shape of a rectangle, but will never be a true rectangle and the wall will never be the way it was before. Gray happiness is the same sadness of the trick of mirrors reflecting the clouds as if they were living inside a room for Magritte, but knowing the truth of it is that they are always out of reach. Gray happiness is the same sadness as Notre Dame before her fire.
According to Ruefle these gray feelings are replaceable. So what makes blue feelings so irreplaceable?
Blue excerpts from Why Art? by Eleanor Davis
I’ve already mentioned in Parisian Doors & Color Histories, how Maggie Nelson wrote an entire book, “Bluets,” dedicated to the color blue. For just under 100 pages, Nelson’s prose chart literary histories and relationships in objects, locations and songs in a numbered list from 1 - 240.
Is blue irreplaceable?
My collection of blues are my own snapshots. You see the clouds parting above the tiled roof, but I don’t expect you to know about the argument that was building behind it or the quality of the quiche lorraine and conversation below the umbrella in a crowded courtyard. The same way you wouldn’t have guessed that a blue box of matching pots and pans was my clue to finding my way back from a detour on a cold day lost in Copenhagen.
Blue is the repetition of the striped portrait in Trier years after having painted a portrait of the same person wearing stripes, sitting in a striped chair in the suburbs of Mint Hill, North Carolina. Or the crisp air of fresh snow in my old neighborhood in Gonderange, one of the few places I have lived where you still have to go to work on a snow day.
It is the reflection of water underneath Lorenzo Quinn’s Building Bridges, (2019) sculpture of oversized pairs of hands arching over the Arsenale’s waterway in Venice and the icy cold temperature of the lake after sweating from hiking only halfway up a mountain in Switzerland.
Blue is walking on the land of past tragedies now presented as painted bridges between one’s own legs or labyrinths of sorrow encased in cement columns stretched out for as far as you can see. It is in the fragile tension of “elemental choreography of aerial theatre” presented in Tomás Saraceno’s Disappearance of Clouds, (2019) and is the unexpected hiss of a swimming swan or the amount of trinkets you can shove under a tent at a Sunday flea market in Vienna.
Blue is wearing out your shoes to finally reach the base of the Eiffel Tower and wishing you could have spent more time in Aldo Rossi’s domed (space ship) tower at the Bonnefantenmusem on your Tuesday afternoon.
Black happiness can be found in a collection of silhouettes, outlining horizon lines, bridges, Cologne’s famous gothic cathedral and the Parisian clock at the Musée d’Orsay. They are shadows dancing with time. What sound might they make?
Poet & painter, Etel Adnan’s most recent book, “Shifting the Silence,” talks about shadows, sounds and time.
“Yes. The shifting, after the return of the tide, and my own. A question rushes out of the stillness, and then advances an inch at a time: has this day ever been before, or has it risen from the shallows, from a line, a sound?
…A particular somnolence takes hold of you when the shadows start growing. Then, the heart creates different beats. You want to touch the leaves, look intensely at each tree. The night falls, already tired, already bare.”
-Etel Adnan, Shifting the Silence
I suppose green happiness is Middle Eastern palm trees, the Witte Huis in Rotterdam, one of the few buildings to survive the bombing of World War II and Vianden Castle, dating from the 10th century, fully restored after a long history of abandonment and ruin.
Green sadness is retired signage, the amount of time it has been since i’ve seen my sister and the city I said good bye to after almost two years in Europe.
Green happiness is the color of leaves shining in the sun, the Palmenhaus Schönbrunn greenhouse, with it’s spiral staircase and Japanese pear trees from my new backyard or the day my friends got married and having an entire vacation with my parents to myself.
Yellow happiness is the same sadness of sitting in the sun on your golden birthday drinking lemonade when a bird poops on your head. It is the reflections in the canal, umbrellas, and restaurants by the waterfront in Nyvan that provide outdoor heating and blankets or cubed buildings in Rotterdam that you can tour if you are into that sort of thing. (This was all pre-covid of course.)
Yellow happiness is the same sadness of finally meeting your friend’s baby after 9 months and only getting to know her for a day and a night. (This was not pre-union striking in France.)
Yellow sadness is the same happiness when it is your last day in France or the small town of Ptuj in Slovenia. It is touring your grandad’s 4k+ beer glass collection, knowing it is now being packed up and sold or your first (film) selfie on your fifth anniversary after eating ice cream on a not so warm day.
Yellow sadness is the same happiness of faded buildings and sunshine filtering through the Musée d’Orsay’s many windows.
While red happiness is the bustling Carmel Market in Tel Aviv, round-a-bout, center-of-the-road poppies, stripes and French bistro chairs. It is Alexander Calder’s “Eagle,” at Olympic Sculpture Park, a European motorbike and the leaning canal houses of Amsterdam.
Red happiness is house boats with jacuzzis, retro volvos, fruit stands, salvaged type, faux windmills and the last christmas we spent with the legendary Carl Holt.
Red happiness is vintage tin containers at the Waterlooplein market, red Parisian doorways and outdoor café seating (back when people used to sit close together). It is brightly painted homes in the neighborhood village, international dog-sitting in Vienna and retro Beetles that are probably really difficult to drive.
Pink sadness are cotton candy like blooms swaying in the wind on your walk home from the gynocologist. They are the lifesize dollhouses you could only admire from the sidewalk or the roses that cheered you up when you were crying in public.
Pink happiness is the Majolikahaus, designed by Otto Wagner. It is the greeting of a friendly mascaron at your doorway or the blooms of Spring matching the neighbor’s house.
Orange happiness is the Hundertwasserhaus and the rejection of straight lines, pumpkins at the Torvehallerne market, sunflower patches and golden frames next to hanging chandeliers.
Orange sadness is the color of the sky during wildfires and sculptures that die after a site specific installation ends.
While white happiness is the first snowfall in a new city, Clervaux Castle, housing the permanent exhibition, “Family of Man,” curated by Edward Steichen, Rundetaarn Tower’s many “hidey holes” and happy accidents within double exposures.
White happiness is the view from behind Mudam, touring the Ptuj Castle, new Spring blooms and finally finding the Jean Dubuffet sculpture at the Louisiana Museum Sculpture Garden - which is strategically hidden in the courtyard only accessible through the café.
White sadness is fog hiding your view of the Eiffel Tower and running out of film. It is the same happiness of finding the trailhead after getting lost on backwoods gravel roads, dodging potholes and eating a donut after hiking for seven miles.
White happiness is the same sadness of a new holiday tradition when you can’t be with your friends and family except through screens.