if you don't open the damn box, the cat'll be dead for certain.

we all agree the sky is blue and the grass is green and the sun is yellow and the moon is white, the dirt is brown, the blood is red, the flower is orange, the beady eyes of the bird are black, and the colours of the rainbow are the colours of the rainbow. we all agree that anything the same colour as grass is green and anything the colour of sky is blue and so on and so forth, and we all agree. we believe in the colours.

but green is only a name and blue and yellow and chartruese and magenta and heliotrope and indigo, all are names. my favourites are periwinkle and pine and silver and just hearing the names is enough to colour a picture in my mind of a periwinkle northern sky reflected in a silver lake surrounded by pine forests. there's a silver canoe and periwinkle rocky shore, and even the fire burns in periwinkle and pine, not in yellow or gold or anything warm at all. these are my favourites: periwinkle and pine and silver.

but even my favourites are flat words here on the page. and even if i pointed to my favourite colours and said, there! there, see? and there! even if i pointed, how do i know what you see?

we all agree that GRASS is GREEN, but what if i stole your eyes and looked through them and what you call GREEN is my PINK. would it make a difference? what if my green is your pink, my blue is your orange, my brown is your yellow, my red is your lavender. are we misunderstood? or, is understanding only at the level of the words and so if we all agree that GRASS is GREEN, we are in fact, understood. is there a GREEN that is beyond the word?

i pull a crayon from the box and i say, this is my least favourite: the cornflower blue. i have always hated cornflower blue. i steal your eyes and see what you see, and i see myself saying i hate cornflower blue, and lo! through your eyes, what i see is myself pointing to my beloved piney pine green.

what is a colour? what is a name?