WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
The Shades of Green in the Green Shade.
byVanderleunonFebruary 5, 2022
Set and Setting
“I am the Guardian of the Gates of the Emerald City. May I inquire who you are, and what is your business?” — Oz
When the burning dry summer is long and the sun drives me into shade on deeper shade I find my mind begins to glide on Green. It’s then that the unquiet ghost of Andrew Marvel appears
“Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade,”
and I attend to the world that is rather than the world as I would wish it.
There’s comfort in the “world dimensional” — cold though it may be, green as it has become. The comfort comes from attending, from paying attention to the shades of green in the green shade.
If you attend you can catch the quick blue crocus jumping over the damp moss tendrils — bright cups of cerulean with slashes of yellow and orange in the center — bursting in a day and flash-frozen and slumped to a sigh in one night. Slumped against the earth’s daubed quilt of green which in a motley of hues endures.
Here high on this hill above Seattle, the blocks below form an island of Ireland where green is the keynote color of this time in this place. What lawn I have that is still unconquered by armies of weed is a symphony of greens painted by the tireless fingers of grass, lichen, mold and moss, punctuated by a single errant crocus with a tip of vermillion gleaming at the top of its jade tower at the edge of the walk where no hand planted it. Out on the everdamp peninsula of my postage stamp backyard the slab of aggregate and concrete has taken on an ebony green sheen from an algae bloom on its misted surface. All the flower pots and buckets brim with water waiting for the lotus and the lily pads.
Strolling the sidewalks one sees that this or that car, left too long parked, sports on paint and trim, on safety glass, a dusting of moss. Looking up you see that the roofs of the houses display mainly moss in small gardens on cedar or asphalt shingles. Where their walls touch concrete slabs clots of moss cluster ringed with miniature moats. Behind the moats they seem to make their own soil through some strange alchemy of rain and air and rise in small hillocks higher by the day.
It is early in the year but late in the long winter of 2013/14 and the Great Northwest is the Empire of Ice Green. It is that storied Great Green Room, sans telephone, sans red balloon, lacking comb and brush and mush, where Someone unseen is whispering, “Hush.”
Bridge Of green, the color out of space.
“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.” — Frost
If not for the tyranny of the color wheel green would be “primary” color. There is nothing “secondary” about green. Green seen holds good and ill, death and life, upon one tether. Green is growth in stalks, shelter in boughs, splendor in the grass. Seen around the gills green is the sign of sickness, the promise of decay and death. In the realm of the mammal, green bodes ill. In the realm of the vegetable, green foreshadows or announces the edible. In the realm of the mineral, green gleams show the emerald, glows from the jade, and as the patina on copper’s conductivity delivers transmitted, transmutable energy with the sting and the speed of light from sun to socket.
Green. Secondary on the wheel of color, primary within the world. Green. The sheen between seed and grain, between the sowing and the harvest, the premise of bread, where waves of green turn amber and from that fruit we form the holy wafer that once blessed becomes the flesh of God — “This is My body.”
And in the ages before, in the time after Eden — previous, previous — when the ice sheets receded and the green man stirred, and decked in boughs walked the paths in Druid echoes, uprooted and ambulatory along the spine of life, of years, the ancient of days when trees and flowers spoke in glades
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem-
save that it’s green and wooden-
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.
Coda
Of green. Protean, fecund, Leviathan of colors.
“… in a green shade.” Say, rather, shades — when through enough green leaf the light is rendered as light, light green when seen in shadow on the skin — for in its sliver of the spectrum the shades of green proliferate beyond the eye’s ability to discern them. There are the greens seen in the light, the light greens. There are the greens seen in darkness, the dark greens. Between? The greens of yellow, black and blue; the greens of the haunted groves, the swollen rivers, the swaths of green seen in the wine-dark sea. The greens on which our games are played. The greens we grind to gray salted dust in our wars. The greens of lovers’ glades.
Green is shy of no colors except the red. In the heat of red times, in the halls of the red death, we seek the cool greens. In the midst of the vast blue, hovering above the deep, we maintain lookouts to call out the first hints of green on the far horizon. Green is either the bass note of our lives in the verdant forested spaces of the Earth, or the high cry sounded when seeing the longed-for oases that accent our deserts, inner or outer, of sand, dust, desolation, ocean. Even faring far forward, voyaging beyond now, when we’ve gone out from this home at one AU from our star and scanned the stars with eyes of beasts our bodies space-bound will yearn to return; to recline on the slopes of green:
We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth.
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool green hills of Earth.
Lovely post. A post of longing, like a song. ‘fI were to write now of color in nature it’d be about white. There’s the rub: a non-color for you.
Since the print, the photo and the computer took hold, the dominant paradigm of color is “additive”. Before that ruled what now is only legacy, and inveighed as the “subtractive”. The hell you say? Pigments, the loins of the Earth, are subtractive? The light on my CRT is additive? Nay says I. Green is only verdant because it is subsumed by the power colors. When green becomes primary, the brain begins its decay.
How many angels will fit on the head of a needle? It beats me, but only the weak ones will be wearing green. For my part, I choose blue. Blue is the god-color, the radiant leader.
All of this being said, I only react because of the strength of the writing. I could read it all day. Please carry on.
ghostsniperMarch 1, 2019, 11:35 AM
In June of 2002 I walked into Flex-Bon and told the dood I wanted to buy 120 gallons of plain white satin paint. He asked me what shade of white. Huh? He then set about educating me on the finer aspects of house paint colors and that there are more than 40 shades of white.
They mix the colors in house on the spot. As he was pressing buttons and the liquid pigments were installed in a long glass tube I saw that blue was in the mix and I asked about it. He said blue is a way to trick the eye and take the edge off the stark whiteness. I asked if it was necessary and he said I would not like the white without it. He said I might not notice it’s absence at first but after awhile it would effect my mood.
Then I remembered something.
Almost exactly 30 years prior, in June of 1972, my dad was getting ready to paint our brand new crib he built in Iona, Florida, and while he did use Flex Bon paints he purchased the pigments and mixed them himself. One of the pigments was blue and he put just 3 drops in each gallon he mixed. He told me it dulls the white just enough to make it compatible.
A few years ago while researching home made laundry soap I came across a product called “bluing” and I looked it up. Bluing is a liquid blue pigment that is used in the rinse cycle that causes whites to appear even whiter, by making them less white. Huh? I still don’t understand the process but I have looked at samples and have to admit it seems to be true. Some how.
Oh yeah, the particular hue that I was looking for that day at Flex-Bon was officially called “white white”, as opposed to say, arctic white, and it was what I painted the entire exterior and interior of our brand new house with.
gwbnycFebruary 5, 2022, 12:17 PM
now I know.
had that bluing on the basement windowsill above the washing machine.
two story balloon framed house with a clothes chute.
darned socks and turned collars.
(+/- )1960.
PA CatMarch 1, 2019, 11:46 AM
Here we are, only 16 days from the commemoration of green’s patron saint (it may be the only color that has one), when everything from beer to bagels is tinted green for the day– and Mr. V. fails to genuflect in the general direction of St. Patrick. He may find a leprechaun taking over his keyboard on the 17th.
Being stuck in New England, I associate green with “town green” or “village green,” i.e., a bit of common land in the center of the town that was often used for recreation. Memories of one of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence from high school English class, namely “The Ecchoing Green” [Blake’s spelling]:
The sun does arise,
And make happy the skies.
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring.
The sky-lark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around,
To the bells cheerful sound.
While our sports shall be seen
On the Ecchoing Green.
Old John, with white hair,
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk,
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say.
“Such, such were the joys,
When we all, –girls and boys–,
In our youth-time were seen,
On the Ecchoing Green.”
Till the little ones weary
No more can be merry:
The sun does descend,
And our sports have an end.
Round the laps of their mothers
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest;
And sport no more seen
On the darkening Green.
Blake’s wording reminded me how many human sports are played on green grass: golf, football, soccer, cricket– and is there any green that awakens the spirit of playfulness more than the green of a freshly mowed baseball diamond?
Anyway, thank you for the essay and the opportunity for some reminiscence.
downeasthillbillyMarch 1, 2019, 3:34 PM
We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field!
He’s rounding third and headed for home . . .
BonafideViewFebruary 5, 2022, 10:46 PM
Perfect poem, thank you
Larry GeigerMarch 2, 2019, 7:02 AM
The palmettos are always green. Always. Spring. Summer. Fall. Winter. They know nothing of brown until a frond dies. Then it turns a nice shade of light brown (tan?), dips low, though it doesn’t detach, and becomes a frame against which the green fronds stand out. They are called “saw” palmettos for a reason. Thick, heavy, leather gloves are recommended when pruning.
The pines are always green. The new green needles are full and long before the old brown ones drop.
The live oaks are always green. The previous year’s leaves turn brown and fall just as the new spring leaves appear. The trees go from a deep green to a lighter green in the early spring.
The ligustrum is always green. Big leaf ligustrum is green like many trees but the dark green ligustrum is greener than most plants. Shiny and bright like the holly. Which is also always green. The holly seldom sheds a leaf. The leaves stay bright green for many seasons.
I look out my window across a sea of green fronds framed by the brown trunks and then the green crowns. I can’t imagine it in white. There is nothing but green, brown and blue sky. Almost everyday. I’m happy here.
DANMarch 2, 2019, 7:11 AM
YEP a bottle of mrs.smiths blueing sitting on the shelf above the washing machine in both grandmas houses. cobalt blue bottles if i remember rightly.
gwbnycFebruary 5, 2022, 12:30 PM
a right royal mess, too, if unleashed wrongly.
AesopFanMarch 3, 2019, 1:02 AM
“There is nothing “secondary” about green. ”
It ain’t easy bein’ green.
Nobody AtallMarch 3, 2019, 11:53 AM
I purchased my final resting place a few months ago. The main criteria were (1) not directly next to the road and (2) in a place that would be plenty green in season. I found a spot that’s on a grassy slope, near a shrubbery garden and with a few small trees within shade-casting distance. I plan to request that crocus and daffodils be planted so I can push them up every Spring.
MontefríoMarch 4, 2019, 5:42 AM
The Marvell verse brought back a memory of a marvelous short story that cites the same verse as its epigraph: “Green Thoughts” by the late John Collier, a writer now largely forgotten. I have his collected work in a 1972 volume and will re-read that story today. I’ll re-read the Marvell poem (“Thoughts in a Garden”)as well; that one’s in a volume I inherited from my mother (r.i.p.), Palgreave´s Golden Treasury.
Thanks for the memory!
MarkJuly 30, 2020, 10:58 AM
Beautiful Post, much of which evoked the song by UK guitarist/producer John Mitchell in his “Lonely Robot” project’s second outing.
In Floral Green
Video here: https://youtu.be/as9Jf9je_-o
Lyrics:
I thought you’d seen
Behind this dream
An endless scene
That you call life
This walk on part
This work of art
So set apart
From otherwise
No great disguise
It’s time to love what you forgot
Another lost forget-me-not
The biggest dream, in floral green
Time forgives what was betrayed
Time remembers brighter days
These great unseens, in floral green
Desolate sun
Great journey done
An idol won
Vast bright unfrayed
In darkened frames
We often gaze
But hope remains
In twilight beams
In floral green
It’s time to love what you forgot
Another lost forget-me-not
The biggest dream, in floral green
Time forgives what was betrayed
Time remembers brighter days
These great unseens, in floral green
She’s so serene
So unforeseen
An endless dream
That you call life
It’s time to love what you forgot
Another lost forget-me-not
The biggest dream, in floral green
Time forgives what was betrayed
Time remembers brighter days
These great unseens, in floral green
Casey KlahnJuly 30, 2020, 11:45 AM
Every year my disdain for narrative increases. It’s the meter, the syntax and the universe of ideas, not the stitches in the fabric.
But, you don’t get mired in narrative. Lovely writing; fine like a strand of gold but mental gold.
Of course, I live in the Land of Green. Washington.
Here’s why I try to keep green minimal or out of a landscape painting: it’s too expected. Or, in a fit of summer, I may have done a landscape in all greens. As you correctly observe, our eyes love green. Green lays itself out in broad array.
Alas, the generation on the rise sees green as a primary. I belong to the legacy cult where I see color as pigments, and today’s paradigm is completely taken over by the photograph and the computer. Cursed change!
rabbit tobaccoJuly 30, 2020, 1:03 PM
A GREEN LITTLE CHEMIST
ON A GREEN LITTLE DAY
MIXED SOME GREEN LITTLE CHEMICALS
IN A GREEN LITTLE WAY
NOW THE GREEN LITTLE GRASSES
TENDERLY WAVE
OVER THE GREEN LITTLE CHEMIST
GREEN LITTLE GRAVE.
gwbnycFebruary 5, 2022, 12:05 PM
I’m put randomly to mind-
Once there was a little girl who wouldn’t say her prayers,
And when she went to bed one night, a-way upstairs,
Her daddy heard her holler and her mama heard her squall,
And when they went to find her, she wasn’t there at all.
I like a green man, this one on Bank St, NYC.
I collect them.
ghostsniperJuly 30, 2020, 1:17 PM
Casey sed: “…today’s paradigm is completely taken over by the photograph and the computer. Cursed change!”
==========
I saw that coming down the pike all through the 80’s and into the 90’s, then I knew I had to get aboard about 1994, or starve. The market for fine drawings of ink on vellum was disappearing behind the flash and dazzle of the mysterious computer that could do everything, better, bigger, faster, and less expensive. The future was NOW!
It took a long time to educate my clients, who mostly had no idea about what I did, in that I still did things like I always did but now I used a mouse and a keyboard rather than a pen and a straight edge. Every single line had to be a coordinated effort between eye/brain/hands. They were aghast that entire sets of construction documents weren’t done in the blink of an eye like all the other amazing things they seen computers do on TV. Ah yes, the magic TV, it plants a seed and then allows your brain to fill in the blanks to your own personal delight. Especially when the blanks are wrong.
I had been using computers for years to do engineering things, you know, numbers and letters that mean stuff. But I resisted the allure of the computer that can be a tool for design, for I was smitten long ago by the grace of coordination between eye/brain/and hand. I could do a life sentence, with a steady supply of paper and pencils, but without them I would rather die.
AnonymousJuly 30, 2020, 2:26 PM
Vanderleun, do you mail free weed to the people who leave comments here?
VanderleunJuly 30, 2020, 2:56 PM
I live in California so folks around here have to work on their own supply. What’s going on here in terms of retail operations is very creative and impressive. Alas, I live in Butte County and it is all just delivered to your door like a pizza man… yeah… like that.. man.
VanderleunJuly 30, 2020, 2:57 PM
rabbit… that’s like a cool rap… its got roll with your flow…. joe…
VanderleunJuly 30, 2020, 2:58 PM
Casey sez:”Here’s why I try to keep green minimal or out of a landscape painting: it’s too expected. Or, in a fit of summer, I may have done a landscape in all greens. As you correctly observe, our eyes love green. Green lays itself out in broad array.”
I’ve always thought that green was the hardest shade to pain since there in in nature seldom, if ever, a single green but only “greens.”
ChrisJuly 30, 2020, 6:20 PM
PATONE/Greenery.
I should of waited to do the bong hits before I watched that. Groovy…
AnonymousJuly 30, 2020, 6:23 PM
Ok. I’ll add to that GS’s comment above. Wavy gravy. Whoa..
Gordon ScottJuly 30, 2020, 6:43 PM
People say Ireland is 80 (or some such number) shades of green. They’re right. But I really never knew how right until I was flying in to the UK early one summer morning, and there were no clouds over Ireland. The pilot even mentioned how rare that was.
It was the most amazing panorama of green. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. So many shades, so many subtle differences, different textures. Being on the ground was nothing compared to this.
Walt GottesmanJuly 30, 2020, 6:45 PM
Mr. Gerard, sir, this post of yours has my brain riffing on, yes, on green:
“…there’s so many different greens inside of Green…” sez Ken Nordine.
Ray Bradbury had his Green Town, a fictional name for Waukegan, his boyhood home.
Papa Hemingway had his Green Hills of Africa, where he and his wife went hunting in 1933.
My wife’s cousin lives in Door County, WI, right on Green Bay. Her ancestors in Ireland might’ve sung that “…they’re hanging men and women for the wearin’ of the green.”
When I was a teenager in days long past, my girlfriend had green eyes, but she was no “green-eyed monster.”
The flag of Saudi Arabia is a field of green with Arabic writing and a sword inscribed in white upon it. Some Muslims believe that in paradise they’ll be wearing green robes. Maybe that flag was inspired by the thought of oasis greenery in the desert.
Some scholars, more erudite than me, say that the Green Knight (in Arthurian legend) who challenged Sir Gawain, and rose from the dead after Gawain beheaded him, is a symbol for Christ.
Isaiah prophesied that: “The waters of Nimrim are dried up and the grass is withered; the vegetation is gone and nothing green is left.” (Isaiah 15:6) What could he have meant by that?
The Psalmist said, in Psalm 23: “He makes me lie down in green pastures;…”
Well, that’s probably more than enough reverie from me. Maybe too much. Thanks for letting me take up some space here. I gotta move along though. I think I see a green light up ahead…
DennyFebruary 5, 2022, 1:17 PM
“The waters of Nimrim are dried up and the grass is withered; the vegetation is gone and nothing green is left.” (Isaiah 15:6) What could he have meant by that?
Maybe it’s because we often all naturally associate green with life, joy and youth.
“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Is. 53:2
Short story of my life to frame my comment: Born in Ohio, raised in Florida, lived in NYC for 4 years -which is the great reason I moved to Alaska.
Looking back on my Florida years I recall a certain discomfort that I just couldn’t put my finger on at the time. In retrospect I suspect it was the constant greenness, the lack of seasons I had experienced in my very early years.
New York City; An interesting period, States of Emergency called over 3 inches of snow. Taking the ferry to Staten Island for a weekend camping trip and hopping on a bus in the dark of the evening, trying to look out the bus window with a topo map in hand, getting off in what we thought was deep woodland, setting up camp, in the forest, awaking in the morning to the sound of someone shouting “Fore!”
Alaska; Spring’s the blink of an eye, the wild roses bloom, soon gone as the rose hips form. Summer’s midnight sun, white nights, almost seeing the growth of brome grass as it gains inches everyday reaching up to five feet tall by fall. Autumn, hectic autumn, so much to do before winter, so little time. Winter; Snug inside, noting the snow go from blue to rose as the noonday sun barely peaks above the horizon. Trips to town to shop, dressed as if, or carting clothing for, a ten mile walk home at a temperature of -40°, ’cause that just might happen if the vehicle fails.
So! Over the years I’ve come to appreciate and anticipate the greens, the vivid spring greens that almost hurt the eyes, the softer summer shades and the comfort ‘neath that shade, the poignant green yellows moving toward a russet fall.
However looking back at paintings, sketches, pastels I’ve done over the years I notice my palette changed with the seasons; rich and vibrant in the spring, mellowed shades on summer works, frantic hues in autumn and soft, relaxing pastels in the long winter night.
Greens are good, quite good, in their season, in their place, in their time, but in a painting in a year, in a lifetime, the contrasts are grand!
Absolut LeeAugust 2, 2020, 7:05 PM
Sniper – Regarding putting the blue in the white paint is probably much more mundane. White paint tends to yellow as it ages. Adding Blue to it, counteracts that enough that it fools the eye.
Tom HylandFebruary 5, 2022, 10:55 AM
From Jewel’s “Madame Scherzo” tumblr page, scroll down to the second painting which I consider one of the finest landscapes of green I’ve ever encountered. “After a Rain” by Arkhip Kuindzhi. https://madamescherzo.tumblr.com/page/24
Auntie AnalogueFebruary 5, 2022, 4:13 PM
All that green, green, green and yet ours is called “the blue planet” as 70-plus-percent of its surface is covered in blue water which, with the yellow of the sun, makes possible all the . . . green. Is that, my friends, why green is a secondary color made up of . . . blue and yellow?
TerryFebruary 5, 2022, 9:56 PM
Evergreen Tree, by Cliff Richard 1960
On Every Branch Will Blossom
Dreams For Me And You
Our Tree Of Love Will Stay Ever Green
If Our Hearts Stay Ever True
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Set and Setting
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Lovely post. A post of longing, like a song. ‘fI were to write now of color in nature it’d be about white. There’s the rub: a non-color for you.
Since the print, the photo and the computer took hold, the dominant paradigm of color is “additive”. Before that ruled what now is only legacy, and inveighed as the “subtractive”. The hell you say? Pigments, the loins of the Earth, are subtractive? The light on my CRT is additive? Nay says I. Green is only verdant because it is subsumed by the power colors. When green becomes primary, the brain begins its decay.
How many angels will fit on the head of a needle? It beats me, but only the weak ones will be wearing green. For my part, I choose blue. Blue is the god-color, the radiant leader.
All of this being said, I only react because of the strength of the writing. I could read it all day. Please carry on.
In June of 2002 I walked into Flex-Bon and told the dood I wanted to buy 120 gallons of plain white satin paint. He asked me what shade of white. Huh? He then set about educating me on the finer aspects of house paint colors and that there are more than 40 shades of white.
They mix the colors in house on the spot. As he was pressing buttons and the liquid pigments were installed in a long glass tube I saw that blue was in the mix and I asked about it. He said blue is a way to trick the eye and take the edge off the stark whiteness. I asked if it was necessary and he said I would not like the white without it. He said I might not notice it’s absence at first but after awhile it would effect my mood.
Then I remembered something.
Almost exactly 30 years prior, in June of 1972, my dad was getting ready to paint our brand new crib he built in Iona, Florida, and while he did use Flex Bon paints he purchased the pigments and mixed them himself. One of the pigments was blue and he put just 3 drops in each gallon he mixed. He told me it dulls the white just enough to make it compatible.
A few years ago while researching home made laundry soap I came across a product called “bluing” and I looked it up. Bluing is a liquid blue pigment that is used in the rinse cycle that causes whites to appear even whiter, by making them less white. Huh? I still don’t understand the process but I have looked at samples and have to admit it seems to be true. Some how.
Oh yeah, the particular hue that I was looking for that day at Flex-Bon was officially called “white white”, as opposed to say, arctic white, and it was what I painted the entire exterior and interior of our brand new house with.
now I know.
had that bluing on the basement windowsill above the washing machine.
two story balloon framed house with a clothes chute.
darned socks and turned collars.
(+/- )1960.
Here we are, only 16 days from the commemoration of green’s patron saint (it may be the only color that has one), when everything from beer to bagels is tinted green for the day– and Mr. V. fails to genuflect in the general direction of St. Patrick. He may find a leprechaun taking over his keyboard on the 17th.
Being stuck in New England, I associate green with “town green” or “village green,” i.e., a bit of common land in the center of the town that was often used for recreation. Memories of one of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence from high school English class, namely “The Ecchoing Green” [Blake’s spelling]:
The sun does arise,
And make happy the skies.
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring.
The sky-lark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around,
To the bells cheerful sound.
While our sports shall be seen
On the Ecchoing Green.
Old John, with white hair,
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk,
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say.
“Such, such were the joys,
When we all, –girls and boys–,
In our youth-time were seen,
On the Ecchoing Green.”
Till the little ones weary
No more can be merry:
The sun does descend,
And our sports have an end.
Round the laps of their mothers
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest;
And sport no more seen
On the darkening Green.
Blake’s wording reminded me how many human sports are played on green grass: golf, football, soccer, cricket– and is there any green that awakens the spirit of playfulness more than the green of a freshly mowed baseball diamond?
Anyway, thank you for the essay and the opportunity for some reminiscence.
We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field!
He’s rounding third and headed for home . . .
Perfect poem, thank you
The palmettos are always green. Always. Spring. Summer. Fall. Winter. They know nothing of brown until a frond dies. Then it turns a nice shade of light brown (tan?), dips low, though it doesn’t detach, and becomes a frame against which the green fronds stand out. They are called “saw” palmettos for a reason. Thick, heavy, leather gloves are recommended when pruning.
The pines are always green. The new green needles are full and long before the old brown ones drop.
The live oaks are always green. The previous year’s leaves turn brown and fall just as the new spring leaves appear. The trees go from a deep green to a lighter green in the early spring.
The ligustrum is always green. Big leaf ligustrum is green like many trees but the dark green ligustrum is greener than most plants. Shiny and bright like the holly. Which is also always green. The holly seldom sheds a leaf. The leaves stay bright green for many seasons.
I look out my window across a sea of green fronds framed by the brown trunks and then the green crowns. I can’t imagine it in white. There is nothing but green, brown and blue sky. Almost everyday. I’m happy here.
YEP a bottle of mrs.smiths blueing sitting on the shelf above the washing machine in both grandmas houses. cobalt blue bottles if i remember rightly.
a right royal mess, too, if unleashed wrongly.
“There is nothing “secondary” about green. ”
It ain’t easy bein’ green.
I purchased my final resting place a few months ago. The main criteria were (1) not directly next to the road and (2) in a place that would be plenty green in season. I found a spot that’s on a grassy slope, near a shrubbery garden and with a few small trees within shade-casting distance. I plan to request that crocus and daffodils be planted so I can push them up every Spring.
The Marvell verse brought back a memory of a marvelous short story that cites the same verse as its epigraph: “Green Thoughts” by the late John Collier, a writer now largely forgotten. I have his collected work in a 1972 volume and will re-read that story today. I’ll re-read the Marvell poem (“Thoughts in a Garden”)as well; that one’s in a volume I inherited from my mother (r.i.p.), Palgreave´s Golden Treasury.
Thanks for the memory!
Beautiful Post, much of which evoked the song by UK guitarist/producer John Mitchell in his “Lonely Robot” project’s second outing.
In Floral Green
Video here:
https://youtu.be/as9Jf9je_-o
Lyrics:
I thought you’d seen
Behind this dream
An endless scene
That you call life
This walk on part
This work of art
So set apart
From otherwise
No great disguise
It’s time to love what you forgot
Another lost forget-me-not
The biggest dream, in floral green
Time forgives what was betrayed
Time remembers brighter days
These great unseens, in floral green
Desolate sun
Great journey done
An idol won
Vast bright unfrayed
In darkened frames
We often gaze
But hope remains
In twilight beams
In floral green
It’s time to love what you forgot
Another lost forget-me-not
The biggest dream, in floral green
Time forgives what was betrayed
Time remembers brighter days
These great unseens, in floral green
She’s so serene
So unforeseen
An endless dream
That you call life
It’s time to love what you forgot
Another lost forget-me-not
The biggest dream, in floral green
Time forgives what was betrayed
Time remembers brighter days
These great unseens, in floral green
Every year my disdain for narrative increases. It’s the meter, the syntax and the universe of ideas, not the stitches in the fabric.
But, you don’t get mired in narrative. Lovely writing; fine like a strand of gold but mental gold.
Of course, I live in the Land of Green. Washington.
Here’s why I try to keep green minimal or out of a landscape painting: it’s too expected. Or, in a fit of summer, I may have done a landscape in all greens. As you correctly observe, our eyes love green. Green lays itself out in broad array.
Alas, the generation on the rise sees green as a primary. I belong to the legacy cult where I see color as pigments, and today’s paradigm is completely taken over by the photograph and the computer. Cursed change!
A GREEN LITTLE CHEMIST
ON A GREEN LITTLE DAY
MIXED SOME GREEN LITTLE CHEMICALS
IN A GREEN LITTLE WAY
NOW THE GREEN LITTLE GRASSES
TENDERLY WAVE
OVER THE GREEN LITTLE CHEMIST
GREEN LITTLE GRAVE.
I’m put randomly to mind-
Once there was a little girl who wouldn’t say her prayers,
And when she went to bed one night, a-way upstairs,
Her daddy heard her holler and her mama heard her squall,
And when they went to find her, she wasn’t there at all.
to topic:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8e4883d2d318568d72aea31ff323746e27916f5f19671ddf09d1bdb400e308bd.jpg
I like a green man, this one on Bank St, NYC.
I collect them.
Casey sed: “…today’s paradigm is completely taken over by the photograph and the computer. Cursed change!”
==========
I saw that coming down the pike all through the 80’s and into the 90’s, then I knew I had to get aboard about 1994, or starve. The market for fine drawings of ink on vellum was disappearing behind the flash and dazzle of the mysterious computer that could do everything, better, bigger, faster, and less expensive. The future was NOW!
It took a long time to educate my clients, who mostly had no idea about what I did, in that I still did things like I always did but now I used a mouse and a keyboard rather than a pen and a straight edge. Every single line had to be a coordinated effort between eye/brain/hands. They were aghast that entire sets of construction documents weren’t done in the blink of an eye like all the other amazing things they seen computers do on TV. Ah yes, the magic TV, it plants a seed and then allows your brain to fill in the blanks to your own personal delight. Especially when the blanks are wrong.
I had been using computers for years to do engineering things, you know, numbers and letters that mean stuff. But I resisted the allure of the computer that can be a tool for design, for I was smitten long ago by the grace of coordination between eye/brain/and hand. I could do a life sentence, with a steady supply of paper and pencils, but without them I would rather die.
Vanderleun, do you mail free weed to the people who leave comments here?
I live in California so folks around here have to work on their own supply. What’s going on here in terms of retail operations is very creative and impressive. Alas, I live in Butte County and it is all just delivered to your door like a pizza man… yeah… like that.. man.
rabbit… that’s like a cool rap… its got roll with your flow…. joe…
Casey sez:”Here’s why I try to keep green minimal or out of a landscape painting: it’s too expected. Or, in a fit of summer, I may have done a landscape in all greens. As you correctly observe, our eyes love green. Green lays itself out in broad array.”
I’ve always thought that green was the hardest shade to pain since there in in nature seldom, if ever, a single green but only “greens.”
PATONE/Greenery.
I should of waited to do the bong hits before I watched that. Groovy…
Ok. I’ll add to that GS’s comment above. Wavy gravy. Whoa..
People say Ireland is 80 (or some such number) shades of green. They’re right. But I really never knew how right until I was flying in to the UK early one summer morning, and there were no clouds over Ireland. The pilot even mentioned how rare that was.
It was the most amazing panorama of green. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. So many shades, so many subtle differences, different textures. Being on the ground was nothing compared to this.
Mr. Gerard, sir, this post of yours has my brain riffing on, yes, on green:
“…there’s so many different greens inside of Green…” sez Ken Nordine.
Ray Bradbury had his Green Town, a fictional name for Waukegan, his boyhood home.
Papa Hemingway had his Green Hills of Africa, where he and his wife went hunting in 1933.
My wife’s cousin lives in Door County, WI, right on Green Bay. Her ancestors in Ireland might’ve sung that “…they’re hanging men and women for the wearin’ of the green.”
When I was a teenager in days long past, my girlfriend had green eyes, but she was no “green-eyed monster.”
The flag of Saudi Arabia is a field of green with Arabic writing and a sword inscribed in white upon it. Some Muslims believe that in paradise they’ll be wearing green robes. Maybe that flag was inspired by the thought of oasis greenery in the desert.
Some scholars, more erudite than me, say that the Green Knight (in Arthurian legend) who challenged Sir Gawain, and rose from the dead after Gawain beheaded him, is a symbol for Christ.
Isaiah prophesied that: “The waters of Nimrim are dried up and the grass is withered; the vegetation is gone and nothing green is left.” (Isaiah 15:6) What could he have meant by that?
The Psalmist said, in Psalm 23: “He makes me lie down in green pastures;…”
Well, that’s probably more than enough reverie from me. Maybe too much. Thanks for letting me take up some space here. I gotta move along though. I think I see a green light up ahead…
“The waters of Nimrim are dried up and the grass is withered; the vegetation is gone and nothing green is left.” (Isaiah 15:6) What could he have meant by that?
Maybe it’s because we often all naturally associate green with life, joy and youth.
“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Is. 53:2
Short story of my life to frame my comment: Born in Ohio, raised in Florida, lived in NYC for 4 years -which is the great reason I moved to Alaska.
Looking back on my Florida years I recall a certain discomfort that I just couldn’t put my finger on at the time. In retrospect I suspect it was the constant greenness, the lack of seasons I had experienced in my very early years.
New York City; An interesting period, States of Emergency called over 3 inches of snow. Taking the ferry to Staten Island for a weekend camping trip and hopping on a bus in the dark of the evening, trying to look out the bus window with a topo map in hand, getting off in what we thought was deep woodland, setting up camp, in the forest, awaking in the morning to the sound of someone shouting “Fore!”
Alaska; Spring’s the blink of an eye, the wild roses bloom, soon gone as the rose hips form. Summer’s midnight sun, white nights, almost seeing the growth of brome grass as it gains inches everyday reaching up to five feet tall by fall. Autumn, hectic autumn, so much to do before winter, so little time. Winter; Snug inside, noting the snow go from blue to rose as the noonday sun barely peaks above the horizon. Trips to town to shop, dressed as if, or carting clothing for, a ten mile walk home at a temperature of -40°, ’cause that just might happen if the vehicle fails.
So! Over the years I’ve come to appreciate and anticipate the greens, the vivid spring greens that almost hurt the eyes, the softer summer shades and the comfort ‘neath that shade, the poignant green yellows moving toward a russet fall.
However looking back at paintings, sketches, pastels I’ve done over the years I notice my palette changed with the seasons; rich and vibrant in the spring, mellowed shades on summer works, frantic hues in autumn and soft, relaxing pastels in the long winter night.
Greens are good, quite good, in their season, in their place, in their time, but in a painting in a year, in a lifetime, the contrasts are grand!
Sniper – Regarding putting the blue in the white paint is probably much more mundane. White paint tends to yellow as it ages. Adding Blue to it, counteracts that enough that it fools the eye.
From Jewel’s “Madame Scherzo” tumblr page, scroll down to the second painting which I consider one of the finest landscapes of green I’ve ever encountered. “After a Rain” by Arkhip Kuindzhi. https://madamescherzo.tumblr.com/page/24
All that green, green, green and yet ours is called “the blue planet” as 70-plus-percent of its surface is covered in blue water which, with the yellow of the sun, makes possible all the . . . green. Is that, my friends, why green is a secondary color made up of . . . blue and yellow?
Evergreen Tree, by Cliff Richard 1960
On Every Branch Will Blossom
Dreams For Me And You
Our Tree Of Love Will Stay Ever Green
If Our Hearts Stay Ever True
https://youtu.be/R5y1uy3abDM?list=RDR5y1uy3abDM
One of my all time favorites.
This song never gets old and weathered.
It stays always green . . . always.
Did you ever love someone so deeply . . . .
That link wanted to install a Chrome extension. I didn’t allow it.
ghost,
The link runs for me and I have no Chrome extensions at all.
Try another Tube video of the song by Keith. You will love it. Very special. Simple and beautiful.