The Year of Purple (A Truə Story)
The Year of Purple (A Truə Story)
In the beginning… well, the latest beginning, there was no Purple. Or Red or Yellow or Blue or Green for that matter. Only White. White everywhere. Such a blinding White that there were no shapes or textures. There were no horizons or curves, no reflections or shadows. Only White.
Eventually, the colors came. First the Yellows and Oranges, then the fiery Reds. Reds so impossibly brilliant you would have thought they were a pigment of your imagination. (Sorry.) Greens came next and took over. Greens became so ubiquitous that people started to believe Green would swallow all the other colors. It didn’t. But it did take over the grasses and the trees; almost all plants anywhere on the planet were bathed in a chlorophyllic Green.
Soon after, Blue appeared and tinted the seas, and the sky, and a handful of eyeballs, and much later, jeans. Oohs and aahs were abundant at the time because Blue was calming and meaningful and just felt right. Mix the Blue sky with the Reds and Oranges of a sunset, and you have yourself a sight to behold. Earth was either a Small Blue Dot or God’s Green Earth, whichever floated your raft at the time.
Everybody, it seemed, was content with the new colors. ROY G. BI was a hit! (Well, ROY G. B, to be more precise—Indigo wasn’t actually in there. Thanks for trying anyway, Sir Newton.) There was a veritable rainbow of colors to choose from—a cornucopia of colors, if you will. Who could want anything more in the color department? It went on like that for countless years— centuries, even. But there came a time when some people started to feel something was missing. Something just wasn’t right. This feeling spread throughout the world until it was an annoying ache in the collective psyche. People would say things like, “Yeah, this eggplant is nice, but it needs a little something. I don’t know, am I crazy?”
And so, when the world needed it most, a change came. It happened one spring morning, in late March. Scientists haven’t figured out if it was 2:13 a.m. or 6:56 a.m., although it could have happened at 4:44 a.m. That would’ve been cool. This all happened way before you were born—yes, even before your grandfather and his great-grandmother were born.
At first, it was thought the cones residing on human retinas inside the eye had evolved to perceive something past the Bluest of the Blues. Scientists now believe the Earth may have passed through an ancient comet’s gaseous wake in its orbit, which caused the visible light spectrum in the atmosphere to refract into a wider... [yawn]. Nobody knows for certain, so let’s just say it happened.
The day it started found people incredulous as they woke up. Some of their flowers had become Purple. The aforementioned eggplant was now living up to its full potential. Some people noticed their eye color had subtly changed. Children realized they suddenly possessed a Purple magic marker, which made it quite helpful to illustrate Thanos. A woman, in what was to be the future country of Italy, was bathing under a waterfall and saw the fine spray create a rainbow more vivid than she had ever seen. She called for the village sciamano (shaman) and insisted he bless her naked body with his… um, staff. A young couple on the isthmus that would one day contain Costa Rica was visited by a sabrewing hummingbird with all its brilliant Violet plumage. The colorful bird landed on the grass between the two lovers, which they mistook for a sign from the heavens. (The bird was merely hungry and smelled their leftover picnic refuse.) They soon pledged matrimony to one another—or whatever they called it back then.
Occurrences such as these, and millions more, took place around the globe within the first minutes and hours of the appearance of the new hue. Sadly, I cannot document each instance of wonder and amazement the dusky color elicited: the joy it roused in children, the magical sensation it brought to elderly eyes, the utter confusion it caused in certain colorblind persons over what exactly was happening. No, this would require extensive processing power and, unfortunately, much more time and dexterity than I possess. Suffice it to say—Purple blew people’s minds.
Now, at this point, you may be wondering to yourself (or out loud, if you’re one of those types of people) what the difference is between Purple and Violet. Let me assure you, I’ve done extensive research on this topic. I have spoken to scores of professionals ranging from scientists, Crayola engineers, artists, designers, ophthalmologists, and ice cream shop clerks (I happened to be there… uh, researching something else.) Oh, and I also googled it. I am saddened to say it’s much too complicated to explain in this modest venue. If you’re looking for that level of academic expertise, go to your nearest soft-serve purveyor. But in a nutshell, Purple can be any variation between Red and Blue; and Violet is smack-dab in the middle. (I could be wrong because I was experiencing brain freeze when writing my notes.)
After several weeks of those oohs and ahhs over the new and engaging color, the sighted human beings of the world began to employ Purple in more creative and functional ventures. Here are but a few:
You’ve all undoubtedly heard of the game of tennis. Some of you more athletic types may even have attempted to play it. Well, in April of the Year of Purple, in the east of what is now Ireland, a young woman began gathering a strange, new Purple fruit that had started growing in a nearby field the previous month. It was the size, weight, and shape of a modern tennis ball, only Purple. And it bounced if you picked it before it was completely ripe. The woman discovered that when she crafted a flat basketweave of fibers surrounded by a rigid framework and added a handle, she could bounce the Purple fruit on it, providing hours of solitary fun. Did this innocent pastime lead to the popular sport of tennis? I don’t know the answer; that’s not my racket (sorry), and cultural anthropologists go back and forth on this subject. If you must know this certain bit of trivia, go ask Novak Djokovic or Billie Jean King.
A few weeks later, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, in the future Peru (known at the time as Pochoqay by the indigenous peoples living there), the new color was used to tint their ceremonial paint. This was achieved by squashing jobee-ha fruit (which was Blue) and combining it with braaxii urine (which was Red), then adding a handful of Great Spotted Albatross guano (for taste) until a fine paste was formed. [FYI: A braaxxi was a crossbred disaster between a pygmy antelope and a woodland bobcat that, thankfully, became extinct—those things were mean.] The finished paint was applied to the faces, breasts, and buttocks of virgin female tribe members, and the coming-of-age ritual involved the “licking off” of the paint by prepubescent males who had completed their math homework with a score of ninety or above. (Hey, don’t look at me like that; I didn’t make this stuff up.) After ingesting enough of the paint, the young boys would ungraciously vomit on the ceremonial gungha (a tethered pig), and the entire animal was placed on a sacramental bonfire, to be roasted and consumed by the previously licked-upon virgins and their mothers at sunset. Many historians now believe this was the first family barbecue; however, no evidence of coleslaw has been found.
The beginning of May in the Year of Purple saw a massive wildfire destroy thousands of acres of forest in what is now known as eastern Minnesota, USA. It has been estimated that ninety-nine percent of the trees destroyed were set ablaze on purpose. A new variation of the Black ash tree had evolved into quite an exquisite Purple specimen that year. When lightning struck in early May and burned a small copse, the Purple wood ignited so vigorously that the colorful smoke was visible for hundreds of miles. The next day, seeded by the woodsmoke, rain clouds swelled and let loose sweet, refreshing precipitation. Big, Purple drops of cleansing rain fell straight down from the gods of power, strength, and wellness. So said the elders of the local Wachachibi tribe, who thus ordered the burning of the entire forest to provide an eternity of good health, physical vigor, and sexual stamina for all its citizens. It didn’t work. The Wachachibi people perished a couple of decades later from buffalo influenza and syphilis. But the legend of the Purple rain lived on for centuries, even into the modern era in that part of Minnesota. It will never be known for sure if a certain latter-day resident of Minneapolis, named Nelson, learned of this historical “tragedy of the trees” and used it in his own storytelling. However, it is widely accepted that the Wachachibi people had nothing to do with the invention of the Little Red Corvette.
The next few months saw a rapid increase in Purple things. Not only did plants and animals get the royal treatment, but inanimate objects like rocks and shells and a new Gatorade flavor benefited from the fresh, luxurious color. (Actually, that last one came many millennia later.) The people of the world believed their respective gods were responsible for the beauty the new color delivered to their world, even though those gods did nothing for such things as buffalo influenza and sunburned nipples. The sheer number of peoples and tribes and colonies and clans and civilizations were so numerous, it must have taken a Herculean effort for all their individual gods to come together, to agree on the idea of mixing Red and Blue and unleashing it on the world.
Unfortunately, not everyone loved, or even tolerated, the upsurge in ubiquity of the strange Bluish/Reddish tint. Some people actually did gather together across the land to form factions of Anti-Purple Leagues ! These dimwits were under the impression the new color was the work of a demon, or a devil, or even monsters that had come to destroy the world. They even made up names for these monsters, such as The Flying Purple Bad Thing and The Two-Headed Purple Gobbler, to name but a couple (roughly translated, of course.) These creatures would eat you and your children if they caught you with anything Purple-related. The various anti-Purple alliances of ignorance met every Tuesday evening, after their mud-wrestling tournament, to devise new ways to blaspheme the wicked color. This went on for a few weeks until a member named Juk (short for Jukawantanabe) pointed out that every participant in his group had Purple bruises, caused by all the wrestling, you see. Everyone was quite embarrassed, causing the majority of the Anti-Purple Leagues to disband, and their members went home to practice the clarinet.
By mid-September of the Year of Purple, the sheen was off the proverbial apple. The recent addition to the color wheel still abounded in new places, and it was still somewhat exciting to see it pop up in fresh and unusual circumstances. But it was similar to having your eighth child—yeah, the wonder of birth and all that crap, but you’d really like to watch the football game. In other words, people got used to seeing Purple invade their sunset, or grow fuzzy whiskers on a half-eaten peach, or tint their majestic mountain. In fact, on the twenty-sixth of September, on the west coast of what is now Australia, the entire sky turned Purple due to a massive electrical thunderstorm. One may ask if the event was featured on the front page of the local paper. No. It was buried on page fourteen, right under a story about a farmer who got his toe sliced off immediately after the invention of the shovel. (Needless to say, this was way before the introduction of the steel-toed shoe.)
October brought a plateau of sorts to the whole Purple situation. Almost everything that was going to be Purple or was going to switch to Purple was already Purple. People were no longer amazed to see their Green figs change to the darker color. Nobody sat in their breakfast nook, staring at the gorgeous new hue of their grape jelly anymore. They simply spread it on their peanut butter sandwich and ate it, and were done with it—then it was back to hunting caribou. Or whatever.
But it seemed the magical new color had more of a lasting effect on the children. They absolutely loved to finger-paint with it. They smeared it on their faces, and elbows, and on the walls of their caves, or huts if their parents were considerably well-to-do. The color inspired them to make up innocent little nursery rhymes and games. For instance, one such game had two children call out in unison and in harmony, “P - U - R - P - L - E, I see you, but you can’t see me! ” They then ran off and hid. The other children hunted them down, and upon finding the hidden duo, dragged them out to a field, doused them with braaxii urine, and lit them on fire while chanting, “P - U - R - P - L - E, we found you, so now you’ll burn! ” (Children weren’t the most proficient at composing rhymes back then.) Anyway, it was all such good fun.
By the end of October of that colorful year, Purple had one last surprise, and it was a spectacular one. Amethyst! Amethyst was discovered on the twenty-ninth day of that month, in a dusty part of what is now France. Interestingly enough, the dude who laid pickaxe to earth, thus accidentally breaking open the first amethyst geode, was named Frank. Frank and his family made their livelihood by catching and selling the Colossal Grinning Spider. The spiders were enormous, hence the need for Frank’s pickaxe. They were so named because if one bit you, your face would swell and stretch painfully into a deathly grimace. Oh, and your eyes would bleed, and you would get itchy pimples on your ankles. Most people didn’t enjoy getting bitten, but the spiders could be simmered into a delicious soup.
People at the time believed some rocks and gemstones held divine powers. For instance, a ruby was long considered useful to boost your energy levels, and a topaz could de-stress you. Also, people will tell you a diamond is a girl’s best friend, but everybody knows a girl’s best friend is Jerry in accounting. But Jerry didn’t even pitch in for the gift card to Applebee’s for her birthday. Did Jerry give her a handmade birthday card with an original poem written inside using four different fonts? No, he did not. That was me—I did that. Jerry didn’t even know it was her birthday. Jerry sucks. I can’t stand that guy.
[I am so sorry for the last paragraph. I went off on a personal diversion there but I’m much better now. Please allow me to start again.]
When amethyst was discovered (by Frank), people believed it held mystical powers. Some thought that if you wore an amethyst amulet, you could drink alcohol all night and never get inebriated. Others swore by its ability to ward off the evil spirit Tukumodu, even though everyone knew it was only Kenneth running around in an old, dirty bedsheet. Many more asserted amethysts enabled a person to keep their trousers wrinkle-free, despite the fact that it would be many thousands of years before pants were invented. Regardless of the special powers the first owners of the Purple quartz thought it possessed, they started a long tradition of superstitious people wearing hard, shiny things on their bodies.
As the last several weeks of that hue-mongous year in the Earth’s colorful history flew by (sorry), the planet became harmonious once again. (That is, as far as the colors were concerned. People still beat the shit out of each other.) Purple and the other colors got along together without too much tension. Purple and Yellow even teamed up on a joint project and came up with a beautiful pansy. It didn’t win any prestigious awards or get invited to any fancy orgies or anything as extravagant as that—c’mon, it was only a pansy, but it did pretty up the garden. There was a rumor at the time insinuating Purple and Black were secretly involved in a naughty March-December relationship, but they insisted they were just friends. But, damn, they did look good together. At first, Blue and Red were not thrilled that Purple was receiving a surprising amount of attention. But, as the year went on, they came to see Purple as one of their own, especially after it was agreed that Blue and Red could list Purple as a dependent on their tax forms.
The month of December of the Year of Purple saw the color become synonymous with royalty. In what seemed to be a phenomenal coincidence, almost all tribal chieftains, elected civic leaders, family patriarchs and matriarchs, gang bosses, head honchos the world over, and some guy named Carl living on his own in a shack in the woods, all adopted Purple as their couleur de choix. Ceremonial robes, religious vestments, official costumes, and even some royal undergarments were dyed and decorated, colored and stained, and adorned and embellished with the new pigment. The managers of the world all believed Purple was rich in divine spirit, the definition of refinement and luxury, and the ultimate color of dignity and respect. And they also thought they looked pretty spiffy when they wore it.
Eventually, people across the globe began treating Purple as they did any other color. For some, it became their favorite color. Others started to loathe it, while others had barely an opinion on it. All of which was fine; the hue was accepted as an entity unto itself, a thing of beauty or an ornamentation to be despised. Either way, it was part of one’s life, to be appreciated or tolerated as one saw fit. Of course, in these modern times, we take Purple for granted. It seems to us it has always been around, a small cog necessary for the entire mechanism to work, an idea as old as time itself, awoken with that initial bang.
Imagine, if you will, waking up one morning and seeing a new color. Not a slightly different shade of Green, or another boring Off-White, or a more radiant Red with greater intensity, but an entirely new color, completely off the spectrum. That colorful surprise is what people experienced for several months, many millennia ago. When Purple “happened,” it was noticed by all, and it was valued for its chromatic significance. It was admired not only for its sudden, remarkable appearance but also for the mysterious effect it had on people. It was truly a masterwork of nature.
By the end of the Year of Purple, people no longer thought something was “not quite right” in their aquariums, or covering their fruits and vegetables, or in their underwear drawers. All the colors, as well as the new one, were now appreciated for their uniqueness and their individual functions, especially at events such as Carnival, Holi festival, and Pride parades. And, of course, obnoxious little children the world over loved getting their faces painted with bright colors at local fairs. Fortunately for everyone involved, those paints, Purple included, no longer contained braaxii urine or any sort of guano.
When the new year came, everything settled down colorwise, and life went on as before, only with a glorious new color in everyone’s paintbox. And everyone was calmed by the fact that their new, royal color would live on in purple-tuity. (Sorry.)
