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. Just White. White everywhere. Such a blinding White that there were no shapes or textures. There were no horizons or curves, no reflections or shadows. Just 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 of 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 happy with the new colors. ROY G. BI was a hit! (Well, actually ROY G. B, Indigo isn’t really 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 for 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 that 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 just 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. Before even your grandfather and his great-grandmother were born.
At first, it was thought that the cones residing on human retinas inside the eye had evolved to perceive something past the Bluest of the Blues. Scientists now believe that 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 really knows, so let’s just say it happened.
On the day it started, people were incredulous when they woke up. Some of their flowers had become Purple. The aforementioned eggplant was now living up to its full potential. Some people had their eye color subtly change. Children noticed that they suddenly possessed a Purple magic marker, which made it quite helpful to illustrate Thanos. A woman in what was to be the future Italy was bathing under a waterfall and saw that the fine spray created 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 as a sign from the heavens. (The bird was just 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 that 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 that 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… um, 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 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 totally 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 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 really need to know, go ask Novak Djokovic or Billie Jean King.
A few weeks later, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in the future Peru, known then as Pochoqay by the indigenous peoples living there at the time, 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 then 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 then vomit on the ceremonial gungha (a pig) and the entire animal was placed on a sacramental bonfire, to be consumed by the licked virgins and their mothers at sunset. Many historians now believe this was the first family barbecue, however, no evidence of cole slaw has been found.
The beginning of May in the Year of Purple saw a massive wildfire that destroyed 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 entire forest to be burned down to provide an eternity of good health, physical vigor, and sexual stamina for all of 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 that their particular god was responsible for the beauty that the new color delivered on their world, even though their particular god 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 that it must have taken a Herculean effort for all their individual gods to come together and agree on the idea of mixing Red and Blue and then unleashing it on the world.
Unfortunately, not everyone loved, or even tolerated, the upsurge of the strange Bluish/Reddish tint. Some people actually gathered together across the land and formed factions of Anti-Purple Leagues! These dimwits were under the impression that 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 of the wrestling, you see. Everyone was quite embarrassed and the majority of Anti-Purple Leagues disbanded 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 like 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 September twenty-sixth, on the west coast of what is now Australia, the entire sky turned Purple due to a massive electrical thunderstorm. But did the event get 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 just 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 no longer were amazed to see their Green figs changed to the darker color. Nobody sat in their breakfast nook staring at the gorgeous new hue of their grape jelly anymore. They just 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 fingerpaint 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!” Then they ran off and hid. The other children then 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 very proficient at rhyming 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 good one. Amethyst! Amethyst was discovered on the twenty-ninth of that month in a dusty part of what is now France. Interestingly enough, the dude that 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 to boost your energy levels and a topaz could de-stress you. Also, people will tell you that a diamond is a girl's best friend when everybody knows that a girl's best friend is Jerry in accounting. But Jerry didn’t even pitch in for that gift card to Applebee’s for her birthday. Did Jerry give her that 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 that 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 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 just Kenneth running around in an old, dirty bedsheet. Many more asserted that amethyst 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 just a pansy, but it did pretty up the garden. There was a rumor at the time that suggested that Purple and Black were secretly involved in a naughty March-December relationship, but they insisted that they were just friends. But, damn, they did look good together. And at first, Blue and Red were not happy 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 that 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. Still 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 that 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 a greater intensity, but a totally new color, off the spectrum. That is what those 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 its 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 that something was “not quite right” in their aquariums, or covering their fruits and vegetables, or in their underwear drawers. All of 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.)