Pablo and the Provenance of Sadness

Ritual clapping,

Ritual clapping.

–

For virtue

Clap

Austerity

Clap

Divinity

–

All his tones,

Brightened or dimmed,

Sacred and sought after for

Their optical purity,

Their metaphorical fluency,

Their brazenness of being.

His paint bubbles assume different hues,

Size shifting,

Membranes thickening,

Trapped and forever glinting,

Stacking in quasi-ordered formations,

Yielding the steady matte of jay’s feathers and monkey pelvis,

The iridescent sheen of morpho butterfly.

–

Clap one of four

In this indigo synthesis

Clap two of four

In this indigo synthesis

In this bric-a-brac rondelet

In this indigo synthesis

Clap three of four.

–

Dreaming and beaming and ritual clapping,

Ritual clapping,

Ritual clapping.

–

For virtue

Clap

Austerity

Clap

Divinity

–

One in four people prefer a patch of brilliant skin,

Prefer neon underpants,

Small and dazzling.

Two in four people prefer a computer screen,

The ideal desktop setting for coldness, sorrow and death.

Three in four psychologists prefer patients

Who disprefer basic emotional valence,

Open-endedness,

Sea and sky,

Pocket-sized vacations.

–

Pablo falls into severe depression,

Begins to paint beggars, drunks, the poor.

He renders famous the provenance of sadness,

The ebb of any energy.

The aqua bulb of his refrigerator

Suppresses the appetite.

The glow is unappetizing.

He thinks of rotten meat tinge.

He color-codes his insect traps.

–

Clap one of four

In this indigo synthesis

Clap two of four

In this indigo synthesis

In this bric-a-brac rondelet

In this indigo synthesis

Clap three of four.

–

Dreaming and beaming and ritual clapping,

Ritual clapping,

Ritual clapping.

–

For virtue,

Clap

Austerity

Clap

Divinity

–

Short wavelengths from the sun scatter molecules in our atmosphere,

Thus the sky,

Thus refusing to look down at where

Crabs, beetles and fungi feast.

Vertebrates turn to figment and

For animal after lost animal we yearn and yearn.

Pablo paints a skink lizard tail, a baboon’s backside and, finally, a shimmering fruit,

All arising from the same arrangement

Of underlying components.

He alters the structure by a few hundred nanometers,

Changes everything.

–

Clap one of four

In this indigo synthesis

Clap two of four

In this indigo synthesis

In this bric-a-brac rondelet

In this indigo synthesis

Clap three of four.

–

Pablo is lentil-sized now, tiny, immortal,

Reflecting back 30 percent of the light

The highest reflectivity ever known, the brightest terrestrial human in history,

He attracts birds and other potential seed dispersers,

His blue will always stay blue.

–

Clap four of four.

–

–

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This piece is a remix of the newspaper article “True Blue Stands Out in an Earthy Crowd”, by Natalie Angier. Read it here.