white

white: it's the color i'm breathing into these days. white running jacket that will keep people from running over me on my night runs. white curve hugging tank top i wear under flowing t-shirts, around the house on warmer days and to the occasional yoga class. white beaded calvin klein shirt that i almost didn't take off the rack because my dad told me as a kid it wasn't my color. and yet, i was surprised to note, now it is. with darkened hair and pale skin, the white brings out the creams i can't seem to remember are there. i only think of my skin as bad, despite the words i've been given. and despite the fact that the connection between white and my skin tones was a random meandering of my writing tonight, my friend lindsey jo was the first to expose me both to the glories of the color white as well as reflect back to me the quality of my skin. what's the connection here? maybe merely the circuitous ramblings of an overtired mind.

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a few words on white from two books that haunt me:

markus zusak's the book thief {that is narrated by death}

first up is something white. of the blinding kind.

some of you are most likely thinking that white is not really a color and all of that tired sort of nonsense. well, i'm here to tell you that it is. white is without question a color, and personally, i don't think you want to argue with me.

* * * A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT * * *
please, be calm, despite that previous threat.
i am all bluster--
i am not violent.
i am not malicious.
i am a result.

yes, it was white.

it felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. trees wore blankets of ice.

as you might expect, someone had died.

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janet winterson's the stone gods:

there is a white that contains all the colours of the world but this white was its mockery. this was the white at the end of the world when nothing is left, not the past, not the present and, most fearful of all, not the future. there was no future in this bleached and boiled place. nothing, not wild, not strange, not tiny, not vile, no good thing, no bad, could begin life again here. the world was a white-out.