The Cleave of Color

by Nancy Chen Long

(originally published in the 2011 issue of Weave Magazine)

puce. i know that	it’s a little like purple, or similar kind of
color. a little boy once said	dream
it to me	when we get older,
—we were coloring—	our petals blanched
in a field of bluebells	—our ancestors chanting in our memory
under the beam of a chestnut tree:	we are all one, child.
i, who had drawn a cart-wheeling girl,	preferring to be insular,
i didn’t want to color her.	humans graft color with artifice and so
i wanted her to be white.	what is real seems real if some other says it is.
there is no white	washing our imperfections,
silly, the boy said to me.	intellect may say we are vapor, while experience says
but you are	to stay the course, even though nothing can be seen except
white	flecks against a foreboding sky. stay the course,
i said	even if happiness should look like a point, even if
looking at his timberwolf	skin betrays the truth. what can be said about the
eyes and tumbleweed	dispersions of words, chaos and form—they are
shadows. he shook his head. no one is	ad infinitum—
white. i am peach, and	our options being finite, then
you are maize. to prove it,	let us broaden our palette—
he raised the crayon to my skin	in order to honor the original—
and the color disappeared against me.	yes, this is so like a dream. and so
i gasped. he did not know	there is no cold, there is only distance from the sun. change
the rules. let’s race, i said. i’ll race you to	the boundary of
the purple house.	what is considered home,
he said, but	those many rooms in one mansion, spinning,
racing	hurling through space. this picture
makes no sense	—a single stone in a galaxy of stones—
and besides, it’s not	the only thing that matters. the flash of
purple, it’s puce.	form is flesh, the imprint of color.
to prove it, he searched	through archives of memory,
everyplace	where we once danced to some familiar chant
trying to find it.	—still, it hums, ambient, steadfast.

Dot Product: The Cross Between Particle Theory and Pointillism

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884; image credit: Public Domain

Dot Product: The Cross Between Particle Theory and Pointillism 
(originally published in the 2011 issue of Paper Nautilus)

  Ø

Up close, everything is made up

of elementary particles, tiny dots.

They vibrate, shimmer, dance

wildly.

Maybe because they’re agitated,

maybe because they’re excited,

it doesn’t matter.

                  The countless tiny particles

that makes us and fill us

are moving, always moving,
even if just a quiver.

  ω

At a distance, anything

of any shape

will look like a dot, a mere point.

An insignificant dot risks

being missed

unless it is named.

And so those who explicate

have given a name—point particles—

to the near nothingness

of our elementary dancing dots.

And the explicators say

those point particles at the root of everything—

idealized—they have no structure,

have no mass.

They take up no space.

Up close

then, perhaps nothing

can look like a dot

because there is no

thing to see.

And yet—

here we are. We, who are made of quivering particles,

we have mass.

We take up space.

ℵ₁

At a distance, a huddle of dots                                   

will take shape, will take color.

Take pointillism: a technique of painting

that uses countless numbers

of colored dots, distinct and unblended dots

all on the flat plane of a raw canvas.

Point after point of pure and different color.

                                    When viewed from afar,

the dots will be marshaled into solid shapes

by the mind:

perhaps into the shape of a proper parasol

held by a woman,

a bustled woman,

prim and detached,

a monkey at her feet,

a romping dog by her side.

In the distance, a boat at full sail,

white and billowy.

And those dots, perhaps a division

of blues, purples, oranges, and yellows,

will converge and blend into some other color—

let’s imagine into the fragrant green of a grassy field.

Form and color, forged

from the smallest dots with no structure.

ℵ₂

At a distance, God is a pointillist painter

and time a ready canvas.

At a distance, the universe is a painting in some art gallery

            and evolution a paint-by-point particles adventure.

At a distance, humanity is a palette of constrained color
            and I am one dot, dancing wildly.