pinkets

an homage to maggie nelson's "bluets"

1.

something happened in the spring. the street i live on turns pink. my eyes suddenly feel like they can’t open wide enough, they can’t see as much of the newly sprouted cherry blossom on the trees lining both sides of the road as they need to. the blossom last for three weeks until, berated by heavy rainfall, they disappear and the trees turn green again. i missed the pink like you would a person.

2.

everything was blue, grey or black when i started working in corporate a year and a half ago. to match, i bought blue and grey pinstripe trousers to wear to the office, and decommissioned a night-out pair of black pinstripes to be repurposed as work attire. my laptop was grey, silver if we’re being generous, and the supplied keyboard and mouse black. the other day i realised i haven’t worn my pink pair of trousers for two years, which used to be a wardrobe staple.

3.

after a few bleak months using company hardware, i bought a matching pink keyboard and mouse for work, and put the black set back in their boxes. that bit of pink started to get me through the day.

4.

my job role used to have ‘writer’ in the title. i liked omitting everything else about it, saying i wrote for a living. this has been my dream since i was four years old and would only wear pink. (purple was barely acceptable; denim could make an appearance.)

5.

at the end of an early episode of friends, chandler flops onto the coffee house sofa and says, ‘okay kids, new dream.’ the camera pans out and we understand that chandler will introduce a new idea for his life to his friends, and they will indulge him as good friends do. i first watched friends as a child, thinking he was serious. that he had a new dream and he would do something about it, because dreams aren’t supposed to stay dreams — they’re supposed to come true. now i understand that dreams are to get you through the day. we all talk about them to make our real lives bearable, like how we used to play pretend as kids, and we swap them out for variety; today i own a bookshop, tomorrow i’m a florist. i’m tired of introducing new dreams as conversation fodder. i’m tired of the real dream getting forgotten.

6.

i’m still only halfway through my twenties, but the closest i get to a club’s flashing lights these days is the gaps in the trees in the park and the disco ball way they force the sunlight breaking through to flicker on and off. the winter was so long this year. it makes the sunlight, its presence and absence, all the more painful for its transience. commuters in the early morning waiting for the tram close their eyes and angle their faces towards it like flowers reaching towards their life source. heading towards eight hours inside, i do the same. the air is starting to smell how it did when i first moved here. a bit brave, a bit hopeful. warmer: pinker.

7.

panpsychism is the ancient idea that everything has consciousness. when the magnolia blooms in the springtime, basking in the sun and cowering from the rain, its sentience makes me balk: the soul of it is so clear.

8.

my favourite part of the sunset is the part where everyone leaves. when the sun has already sunk down into the horizon and tucked itself in for the night. longer, stronger wavelengths such as red, orange and pink can pass through the atmosphere without being scattered away, resulting in these hues hitting the bottoms of the clouds and reflecting a pink glow back to the ground. i always wait for the pink clouds after sunset.

9.

or maybe they wait for me.

10.

recently i have wanted to have one of those effortless but curated instagram accounts, the ones with carousels featuring bike baskets and cherries and the ocean, the ones where you feel like you know the person except of course you don’t, and you feel like you could be that person except of course you can’t. but then on the other hand i feel like i am altogether too stalk-able, anyone could find out everything about me. i’ve been more honest in my writing than i have ever been with myself.

11.

i suppose this is the writer’s curse: to not want to be known or seen while needing to write about and share your innermost thoughts and vulnerabilities. but this is also the writer’s job: to articulate, in their own way, something unknowable yet universal. to pretend the pink clouds wait for you and you alone, when in fact they wait for all of us who notice them.

12.

pink is the world’s oldest colour. the fossilised pigment molecules discovered in rocks deep beneath the sahara desert proved this: they were vibrant, undeniable, indomitable pink. pink knows the secrets of the universe. if i put my trust in anything, i put my trust in pink.

13.

i have often complimented you just to see the pink in your cheeks. pink in the sky, pink in your cheeks. in heaven as it is on earth.

14.

has a colour ever asked you something before? because pink asks me all the time, when we’re alone — who am i? who am i when nothing is required of me? who am i when no one’s looking? when it’s just me and a colour i worship without fully knowing why?

15.

in the 14th century, pink wasn’t a colour, but a verb. to pink meant to pierce or decorate with small, perforated patterns, creating serrated edges like petals.

16.

i’m worried i might be starting to pink. my edges are pierced, not yet petals, but they’re sharp, like they could hurt.

17.

my mum thinks i’m brave. i think i’m too scared not to be.

18.

every ending wants a neat ribbon. i’m at least a quarter of my way through my life, i have seen many endings: i’ve suffered them, i’ve perpetrated them, i’ve held onto them for much longer than i needed to. and what they all have in common is that they beg me to tie them up nicely before i set them aside. to search for the meaning in them before i abandon them. and when i can’t find the meaning, when the story has no moral — worse, when there’s no story at all — they linger for the sole purpose of haunting me. i start to hate the sound of my name, and it takes the pink right out of the sky.

19.

i’m learning, these days, how to become brave enough to be gentle and slow and not very brave at all.

20.

i’m still waiting for something to happen. for the story to wrap itself up. i am trapped in a narrative-less existence, waiting, waiting for something to happen.

21.

i’m beginning to worry that i’m the thing that has to happen.

22.

pink doesn’t even exist on the light spectrum. it is a shade of red. pink got its name in the 17th century, after the flower, dianthus. it took pink seventeen centuries to forge its own name, to cease being a derivative of red. like pink, i will take my time in becoming who i want to be.

23.

the pink in the sky never stays for long. nothing that good ever does. soon, it’s black, then blue, then grey. but the pink will always come back, even if you have to wait a while to see it again.

24.

this is its fundamental lesson. wait for the other colours to pass. wait for blue and grey and black to leave. push them out if you can. grab pink wherever and whenever you can — observe the cherry blossom, plant the pink dahlias, stay for the pink clouds after sunset. resist meaning making in the arbitrary: find it in the mundane — and trust that what you choose to see is enough.

25.

and i wonder what is the point of thinking about what you’re going to do if you’re not going to do it? and what if doing the things i want is only as simple as giving them a name? what if we are only retelling our life to ourselves, over and over, until we like the way our story sounds?

last one.

pink may be my longest devotion. my first and last favourite colour. i stand on the pavement next to the church. planes crossing baptise the sky above. and me, below, closer to faith yet more cynical than ever.

hilma af klint, the eros series, no. 8