COLOR BLIND
by Marie Delgado Travis
One of my CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE LATINO SOUL co-authors and I exchange poetry and prose occasionally, special gifts from the soul. You'd like Charles Mariano, as I do. His tongue-in-cheek bio in the award-winning anthology, co-edited by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Susan Sanchez-Casal, is by far the most intriguing to me:
"Charles Arthur Mariano lives in Sacramento, California, born and raised in the Central Valley town of Merced, California. Charles currently works for the state government at a low-level position and writes in the basement of that building after hours."
I've been privileged to read many of Charles' works. Some have made me shake my head in amusement. Others, especially those about his childhood, have touched me more deeply than I let on with him. He was one of seven children of migrant workers. "When are you going to publish, Prince Charles?" is my usual response.
In our most recent exchange, I enclosed a poem I had just written:
BLUE
Had I known it was the only time
I would have studied the paintings on the wall
counted the steps that led to his bedroom
clutched the pillows on the sofa
traced the door that led from
the kitchen to the table.
But mostly, I would have gazed
--steadily--into his eyes.
Were they sky blue, periwinkle or any
I could recreate now with words or watercolors?
There are far too many blues.
Charles' response was not what I anticipated. He wrote, "I've never used the word periwinkle before, and until you did, didn't know it was a color."
I was surprised. How could he not know Periwinkle? I immediately explained: "It was one of the blues in the Original 64 Crayola set. But you're probably too young to remember. Don't tell me you don't know Cornflower Blue and Burnt Sienna!" To underscore my point, I sent Charles the list of the original crayons. Most were created in 1949, the same year I was: Maize, Salmon, Carnation Pink....
The next day, I received another e-mail from Charles: "Whoa! Colors galore! Ok, you got me. Although I gotta say, my lack of color knowledge has more to do with it being a guy-thing, than age. I played with crayolas like any other babe in the woodsie, but my attention span went no further than the small packs, i.e. blues, brown, yellow, etc.
Might even have something to do with financial status, which as I recall was more than a little bleak. Crayons were usually passed down as half-sized pieces or smaller. A brand, spanking new 64-color set to us was a gift from the well-to-do. Plus, I'm quite sure in that plastic tub of broken pieces, the periwinkles were all gone. Not that it bothered us. Can't miss the colors we never had.
Oh, and one more thing to toss in the color woodpile, if periwinkle was similar to blue, then my little colorblind ignorance was not bothering to read the label and calling it blue. Too much thinking for exact descriptions. If it looks kinda, sorta like blue, then by golly, it be blue!"
Charles' reply reminded me of a Mark Twain story, suggesting that it was Eve, not Adam, who named everything. But it also made me realize how wealthy I was. My origins were humble, too. I grew up in a Bronx housing project. But I once possessed all the colors in the world in a cardboard box ... some I never even used.
Charles thanked me for the art lesson. I thank him, as always, for his friendship and colorful lessons on life!
