The Colour White

This post is the last in a series put together in honour of spring colour week over at poppytalk.

Associations being with gwai lo (the white ghosts of Hong Kong), blank pages awaiting ideas, clouds.
What I noticed in this week of colour was how so many colours seem to overlap: where does violet end and blue begin? What is the difference between a bright silver and white?
And how can such questions be so basic, and certain questions be so evasively hard to address, like: where does caring for humanity end and the infamous path paved with good intentions begin; or, what is the difference between loving unconditionally, and loving in a self-serving way?
If colours are complex, then so is the path of our lives.

What is the function of white? It is the default Western-style wall; an eye-catching colour for clarity (often used on sign posts); the colour of cleanliness (doctors' coats)... White is the empty space, the canvas we build around. It is the colour of snow, the colour of the sky, these ephemeral phenomena, the sign post of our passing lives...

White is the reflection of reflections in a mirrored gazebo, a place where things (like Rilke's things) come to gather.

And if someday all we have done
and all that has happened to us
seems so inferior and strange,
as though there'd been no point
in taking the trouble to outgrow our first pair of shoes
just to come to this -- ... Shouldn't this
strip of yellowed lace, this tightly meshed
flowery border of lace suffice
to keep us here? Look: this at least got done.
- from Rilke's Being Human

Elements: pugly pixel .