Once, fifteen years ago, meandering down a dirt path during a sunset filled moment in a foreign country, after days of solitude and reflection, and with nothing to occupy my mind but my mind itself (rare these days, in our always-connected world), I looked up at the blossoming sky and drew a fast breath.
The sky was an indescribably shade. There were layers of colors in that spectacle that to my limited eye could only be called "blazing sunset," but on canvas, even with the most succulent of oils or sophisticated of cameras, I knew could never be replicated. My soul said aloud, of its own accord (to the crickets and Howler monkeys should they have been listening, though surely not, as I think we were all busy watching in awe):
"There is no name for that color."
I have thought of these words many times since, and repeated them ad nauseum as an intimate and personal mantra, my secret magic with the Universe, whenever nature's bounty catches me visually off guard. In fact these words are more of a stand-in now, a proxy for when something is far too much, far more than a human could possibly know or experience; some inferior fraction of larger whole.
When I think back to its origins though, that exact, nameless hue, on that specific night, scorched forever to memory, that maybe only me and the butterflies could see, or those with a truly present and transcendent state of mind, I stood in a stupor until the color had finally dissolved into a quite spectacular, if ordinary, pinkish orange. Changed, I went on my way.
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