by Clara Park
In this world, no color has ever existed. The skies are white, the trees are black, and the people are grey, their eyes stormy and dark... But my eyes have always been different; they glow a dark brown, like the color of all the colors of a rainbow are mixed together. Maybe that is why I can see what others can’t: color.
Throughout my life, I have encountered various shades and types of what I call “colors.” To put them in simple words for those who have never seen them, there are five. The first is red.
Red. It is a powerful color, one so intense that it feels hot just looking at it because of the raging emotions that it expresses. Love, anger, passion, and violence. It is a fiery, stimulating color that gives energy to whatever or whomever has the color. A couple I see sitting on a bench is flaring with red; their cheeks blush with red, as red blood pumps through their body with the excitement of young love. Red is emotion.
Orange. That warm color that is packed with the sour and sweet taste of fruit. Whenever I think of this color, I can only think of the fruit, which perhaps makes it the simplest to define. It is the taste of the orange, the taste of orange flavored candies, and the taste of the refreshing coolness of an orange popsicle that the other children and I enjoyed so much when we were young. Orange is the color of summer.
Yellow. It is that shining bright color that the sun burns with, as its heat stretches across the ground and buildings, taking control over everything it can touch with its light. It is the pages of a book that have been touched by a thousand hands over thousands of years. It is the taste of butter on a golden toast that my mother made and the color of a tall sunflower rising to the sun. Yellow is the taste of memories and nostalgia that always brings me back to the past.
Green. This color is everywhere—the trees, the grass, and the plants. It is the feeling of exhilaration you get when a roller coaster speeds down. Rolling across the lawn in spring makes the scent of the freshly cut lawn even stronger. The world just shines more brightly because of green: the color of life.
Blue. It lies above us and below, in the sky and in the ocean. It brings the aura of serenity on a cloudless day, as the breeze just washes all over my skin. The subtle ripples playing across the water makes me forget all my worries, as the beautiful baby blue spreads over me and the thick dark blue keeps me afloat. It is the color of relief.
I cannot imagine a world without color. The sense of life and emotion is lacking, and I wish that my stories of these colors could bring people to imagine what these colors feel like. As such, maybe, although people can’t see the colors, they can understand and feel what story each shade can tell. I named this ability of understanding color as kaleidoscopic thinking: a way of seeing things others, who don’t understand colors, can’t see.