The Problem with Orange is Blue…

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“When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?”
― Shel Silverstein

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They say that nothing rhymes with orange. They say… a lot of things. They never stop talking, opining and making their opinions magically turn into fact, law, rules, and such. They spend their time looking outside of themselves for flaws, faults, imperfections, grievances, and other worrisome issues.

They are sometimes we, us, me, and you.

Orange feels… at times that it needs to apologise for existing and causing so much hassle to poets and other people who find it too unique, too much of an individual, too special… and precious – precious not in a good way, it seems.

How dare you, orange, be so difficult!

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“Grover wore his fake feet and his pants to pass as human. He wore a green rasta-style cap, because when it rained his curly hair flattened and you could just see the tips of his horns. His bright orange backpack was full of scrap metal and apples to snack on.”
― Rick Riordan

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And yet there is an appeal about it, about those who are difficult. Some of that appeal is due to the need to control what is wild and free, to tame it and bring it into the fold of order (human order, which makes even more of a mess but as long as it labels such mess as tidy, then it is order).

We love independence, when we want it for ourselves, but when someone else wants it for themselves and that someone else is someone whom we want for ourselves, then we hate independence and call it by many other names.

We do that quite a bit, us humans, we have one word (usually a positive one) for ourselves when we do something, but when someone else does the same something we do, we have other words for that (often negative ones).

We’re a weird old bunch of orange with a lot of blue thrown in to mess up colour coordination.

We’re allowed to find fault, criticise, critique, be insensitive towards someone else (for their good, of course, because we’re experts on who they should be and what they should be doing), however… if they do the same towards us, it’s different. We take umbrage, get upset, feel hurt, and so on. How dare they… and yet we dare. We do to them what they aren’t allowed to do to us, and have lots of reasons why we are justified but they are not.

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Orange is the colour of emotion. Of guts. The glory and the gory. So it makes sense that it does not rhyme with anything (you’re still trying to buck that rule of rhyme, aren’t you).

Trying to find something which rhymes with orange is like… trying to make someone else feel as you do. It’s crossing an emotional boundary, invading a sacred space… how dare they protect themselves against your invasion – but if the tables were turned, your defenses would not put up with it and would reject them and their interference (even if they say it is for your own good – good is a moveable feast).

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“The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.”
― Ernest Hemingway

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Blue is the colour of… emotion, or so it says. However its emotion tends to be one of intellect. It feels through thought and thinks endlessly about feeling. Many of its feelings aren’t feelings at all, they’re thinkings disguised as feelings.

Blue knows how to rhyme with lots of words, and it uses all of them, repeatedly if need be. It feels, and emotes what it feels, verbose and verb-friendly. Blue turns the emotions of orange into a crusade of doing, of communicating, of thinking, of feeling and thinking about those feelings until emotion becomes an intellectual pursuit.

Anger is orange, but when blue gets a hold of it…

I am angry, says blue. Why am I angry? Blue asks. I don’t like being angry (but I do), something must be done about this! Find someone to blame, a scapegoat, a fall guy or gal, a verbal punching bag, it’s their fault and I must make them know it, feel it, repent for what they’ve done… to me!

Blue seeks out the problem in everyone but itself, and seeks to make them blue too. Feel me, feel what I am feeling, I am going to tell you what to feel and feel it you must, I am going to batter you with words until you do/feel/think what I want you to do/fell/think – and then I’m going to feel/think bad about it because I am blue.

Blue makes itself feel as bad as it makes others feel, it stews in its own thoughts and gets lost in all the simmering and seething ingredients, then makes itself feel even worse for making others feel its pain, but… that glorifies its gory guts, and it loves through its hates and hurts.

An orange moon can’t compete with a blue one, and blue knows it… orange doesn’t know it because orange doesn’t do that kind of thinking, knowing, intellectual thing.

Orange is just orange.

Blue… is never just blue. Blue has to colour the world with its hues, shades and shenanigans.

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The problem with orange is blue, because orange just has/is an emotion, but blue has to turn an emotion had into a crusade of words and thoughts… and it is like they, them, us, we, me and you… it needs someone to listen, hear, pay attention, acknowledge and validate (willingly or unwillingly).

And the rub… keeps rubbing until everything chafes.

And maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be. Orange and blue clashing. One taking the other on a journey… until they both learn something from each other (although blue can be a bit deaf to orange, as orange does not use words).

Grrrr, says orange – meaning Blue, stop trying to make me like you. I am wild, crazy, free and fluid. Tame me and you kill me. Without me, you’re just a talking head. I ground you, earth you, turn your talk into fertiliser for a seed, a plant which will grow, an energy which vibrates and ripples.

Shhh, says orange – meaning Blue, you want me to be a windmill, grinding away, turning real into dust unreal, and yet I am the wind blowing your unreal dust away.

Hmmm, says orange…

I must turn this Hmmm into something, says Blue.

And so it goes…

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“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”
― Anthony Burgess

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