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My train from Paris was scheduled to depart before
dawn. In France for twenty-four hours, I hadn’t
adjusted to the time change, let alone sorted the
U.S. coins from the Euros in my pocket.
Breakfast was coffee and a croissant, which I picked
up from the open air booth, inside the station.
While there would be coffee on the train, I needed
some caffeine now. I balanced my meal in one hand
while putting the change into my pocket with the
other. As I withdrew my hand from my pocket a dime
squirted out and rolled across the floor; making
an arcing trajectory that would put a wide grin
on a physicist’s face. I followed in pursuit.
Whoever said a dime doesn’t go far these days?
It rolled and rolled, toppling over at the feet
of a French woman who had just bent down to retrieve
her fallen necklace. By coincidence, she had dropped
her fake pearl jewelry at the very moment my dime
escaped. Perhaps the deity in charge of practical
jokes was busy this morning. Still balancing my
coffee and croissant in one hand, I reached down
for my run away ten cent piece. The woman grabbed
at my coin as my fingers lifted it from the concrete
floor. She gave me a look that said it was hers,
not mine. It was too early in the day to make an
international incident, certainly no point in wrestling
over a dime. I handed it to her and she inserted
it into her change purse without looking at it.
No doubt she failed to understand my words: "You'll
have a nice surprise later when you try to figure
out how an American dime got into your purse."
Two people will be surprised today. Call it chance
or minor, cosmic, practical jokes; something unseen
is at play. I am bound for Rotterdam, on the high
speed Thalys, to see friends. The train is not crowded
at this hour, so I have an empty seat beside me.
Across the aisle, a businessman is removing his
tie and blazer, folding them neatly and laying them
in the vacant window seat. I spread out my things;
my new i-pod, writing materials, and some paint
chips I hope to use for my color class. My color
study students arrive in Paris a few days after
I return from Holland. The paint chips are intended
to help me field test one of my lesson plans. I
will have a couple cups of coffee and engage in
writing, rather than sleep, to make time vanish.
Outside is darkness sporadically interrupted by
the streak of a lightbulb, not much to look at.
The businessman, on the other side of the aisle,
has made himself comfortable and is using the sleep
technique to melt the miles and hours away.
Everyone else on the train has taken the breakfast,
offered by the steward from his rolling cart. Some
read their newspapers, others go over their notes
for their upcoming business meeting in Brussels
or Amsterdam. My sleeping neighbor was deeply in
dreamland long before the cart came down the aisle.
He didn’t stir or otherwise react when the
steward accidentally slopped coffee onto his chest.
The steward was about to serve me when he slipped
and fell backward. No doubt the cosmic joker was
at work again. The actual amount of hot coffee and
grounds was less than a quarter cup. That the businessman
didn’t awake only delayed his discovery of
his now stained blue, oxford dress shirt.
Eventually the dark orange coffee dried into a
purplish speckled stain about the size of a fist,
a gorilla size fist. He continued to sleep soundly.
What was he dreaming of? I now had both the distraction
of the event and recording it on paper to make the
time go by.
The businessman continued his slumber, as the sun
rose. With intense sunlight flooding the car, deflecting
off all surfaces until the entire interior was illuminated,
I decided to do my color observations. I spread
the color chips across the empty window seat. They
were an array of flat and gloss colors as well as
a range of metallic and mica modified colors. Having
taken this train several times before, I knew to
expect changing lighting conditions, interior lights,
lights off, overcast skies, sunlight, passage through
tunnels, that sort of changing illumination. I had
a simple question: would any particular color resonate
as consistently dominate throughout the trip? I
admit I’m not scientific. I would be unable
to make a general judgment, only one that applied
to my own color perception. But, would the variations
in the ambient lighting influence which colors might
seem dominant to my eyes? My method was to glance
at the rows of colors periodically and take note
of which colors caught my eye. Then I would disconnect
from the paint chips, close my eyes and cast my
vision elsewhere, so I could give a fresh look at
the colors from time to time and as the lighting
changed. I rearranged the chips so they would not
always be in the same order when I again viewed
them. I resumed writing about the man with the purple
stain.
As I was struggling to find an adequate description
for the coffee spill, something caught my attention
out the corner of my left eye. I had the sense that
a silent emergency vehicle was passing me and signaling
me to pull over. I turned and looked down to see
paint chips flickering. Some paint chips seemed
to be flashing, like neon lights on a flea bag hotel.
The standard colors sat dormant, unanimated. Yet
the metallic colors snapped on, then off, then on
again. How could this be? Had I drifted off to sleep,
like my neighbor?
No, the answer became clear after little thought.
Maybe the Trickster had contrived this as a surprise
for me, illustrating the affect the invisible can
have on an inanimate object.
The train was traveling at such a high rate of
speed that anything outside the train’s window,
relatively close, is a blur or virtually invisible.
Wide objects become blurs and thin vertical lines
fly past so quickly they don’t register as
ever having been there at all. Alongside the track
are evenly spaced poles; poles I had never before
noticed. I hadn't noticed them until I looked for
an explanation of the stroboscopic effect the mica
and metallic paint chips were demonstrating. After
a few minutes I saw that the pulsing related to
a momentary shadow cast over the paint chips by
each pole the train sped past. The standard flat
color chips were not reflective, even the glossy
ones didn’t produce this strobe effect.
When the Thalys slowed to enter Brussels, the man
wearing the gorilla fist coffee stain awoke. He
did a classic double take at the mess on his chest.
Should I tell him? Now that he's seen?
I asked if he spoke English. He was a Dutch businessman,
so naturally his English was very good. I related
the accident to him. He seemed quite calm, as he
leaned into the aisle and gestured for the conductor.
Soon he demonstrated that his Dutch was quite expressive,
as were his hand gestures. Colorful language, judging
from the heads that had spun around to see what
was happening. I could almost understand what he
was saying to the train manager. In the end he got
a free ticket courtesy of the coffee spill. Fortunately,
he had a second shirt in his bag, which he went
into the W.C. to put on. He came back wearing a
crisp yellow green, almost chartreuse, shirt.
Once the train moved beyond the grayness of Brussels
and into the Belgian countryside, we returned to
the lush mix of fields and wind animated trees and
bushes. The view turned to a wide range of greens,
punctuated by the occasional red brick farmhouse.
The overwhelming sea of green outside and my neighbor’s
yellow green, proto-chartreuse shirt, replacing
the mauve-purple color that the combination of the
coffee and bluishness of the oxford shirt created,
caused me to remember two paintings in the Musée
d'Orsay. The paintings are evidence of the invisible
and historic battle between two secondary colors:
green and violet. Both colors are polar expressions
of blue. The particular green was loaded with yellow
and just enough blue to be categorized as a yellow,
yellow green. The purple in question was at the
opposite end of the blue, with more red visible.
They are close to being pure complementaries.
A battle between green and violet? Certainly colors
have represented armies, such as the blue versus
the gray. Colors are often used as tags to identify
opposing sides in a conflict. But here was a war
where one actual, manmade hue vied for dominance
over another. In the war between green (proto-chartreuse)and
violet or purple (mauve) no blood was spilled, however
the outcome was decisive.
What set the stage for this international struggle
between two opposing hues were economic and scientific
forces driven by the Industrial Revolution. As a
consequence of the Industrial Revolution new commercial
and scientific opportunities and questions evolved.
Just as the advent of printing necessitated an increase
in paper production, automated looms consumed larger
and larger quantities of cotton and linen. More
and more fiber was required for the textile trade,
as well as a need for light fast and consistent
dyes. Coloring materials for cloth could also supply
the art industry. Governments discovered that new
colors could produce economic benefits, so both
France and England promoted the discoveries of their
scientists. Color had the potential to produce great
wealth, and wealth begets power.
The 1862 Exposition Internationale, in London,
became a battle ground, pitting England's William
Perkin's violet, Mauveine, against a luminous new
synthetic green concocted by the French color chemists,
Renard. The host nation had the upper hand, not
withstanding quite an appealing color. Queen Victoria,
who had four years earlier worn mauve to her daughter’s
wedding, attended the exposition in a gown dyed
Mauveine. The ultimate winner, unsurprisingly, was
violet, "The Color of the Nineteenth Century".
A visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum will underscore
this claim. Surprisingly, until she saw the economic
significance of the English color industry, her
Majesty is known to have shunned mauve. In a six
page Buckingham Palace memo she requests that flower
arrangements not contain anything mauve.
Few, however, know how far France went to promote
its acid yellow green, a forerunner to Chartreuse.
The Empress Eugenia, possibly the single most influential
taste setter of the day, had been an early fan of
purple. She often appeared in dresses dyed with
the French version of Perkin’s mauve, a color
she said matched her eyes. But in 1862 she put aside
personal taste for the cause of her nation, forsaking
violet for green. Not only is it recorded that the
Empress Eugenia wore a silk dress of the new green
color to the opening of the Opera, at the Exposition
Internationale; certain salon painters, it would
seem, were encouraged to commemorate the color.
Two paintings on display, in the right hand galleries,
at the Orsay seem to feature this forerunner to
the more successful chartreuse. When you visit the
museum, look for an unusual green. It’s a
green more of commerce than nature. Look in the
right hand galleries and you’ll likely find
it.
It’s like finding a twenty centime Euro in
your purse full of nickels, pennies, and dimes.
But unlike the woman who dropped her necklace and
gained a dime, you will understand where the green
comes from. I have an image of the woman discovering
my dime. Her puzzled expression gives me a smile.
Cosmic trickster or not, life is filled with an
unrecognized stream of wonders and mysteries.
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