The Color of

i once had a friend who was an amazing artist. The lines that came out the pencil in his hand were enrapturing. But like many artists, he had few motivating goals in his life. Opportunity by opportunity walked by his door and he ignored them all. He did have one goal and that was to discover a new color.

“But S____,” I objected, “the color wheel is complete, ROY G BIV, where would you put the new color. It’s impossible; all the colors there are we know about.”

“The undiscovered color is nothing we can imagine. You don’t believe it because your thinking by the definitions you already have. The new color, we have no context for it, no way to think about, no frame of reference. But one day, the new color will find me and I will be able to tell the world, your crayon boxes are incomplete. I’ll be famous.”

“Okay...,” I said taken in by this idea of not having the right context or definition to discover something new. Dictionary definitions are so limited. They do not help a blind person understand what yellow is:



yel·low (yl)
n.


The hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between orange and green, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 570 to 590 nanometers; any of a group of colors of a hue resembling that of ripe lemons and varying in lightness and saturation; one of the subtractive primaries; one of the psychological primary hues.
A pigment or dye having this hue.
Something that has this hue.


“So maybe we are just blind to this new color you will discover and one day we will be able to see it....Or maybe you’re just crazy.”


This friend of mine, I have no idea what country or state or time zone he is in now. I can not really call him a friend. He has become more of a memory. But I would like to tell him, that indeed I have found a new color. A color that has always been here, but I’ve been blind to see: The color of _ _ _ _ _