Remarks on Color: Timid White and Bruised Sand: A Conversation
Remarks on Color

by Eve Wood | Nov 9, 2021

Ruben Ochoa, Post Collusion, 2018

Considering the world today, it’s no wonder you’ve begun to peel, to pull away from your respective homes, to hide from the tremors, quakes and quick-sands of the living world. We are all guilty of something. We have all fallen under at some time or other, curling in on ourselves behind the bedposts.

Bruised Sand tells Timid White: “You must learn to live like the future is a clean wide wall that could burn down at any time. You must learn to let your hair down at the center of the fire.”

Timid White whispers back in chilly admonition: “You’re one to talk with your dishwater bangs and the dirt beneath your nails. You always spend too long taking out the trash, discussing matters of import with any passing stranger who will listen, or perhaps this is your final attempt at optimism.”

Bruised Sand trembles his answer through half parted lips: “Take care, my friend. Colors like us have too many shades and more options than most, yet life on a static beige wall can kill you as the glue starts to dry and the boredom sets in. These are not admonishments so much as they are words of commiseration, living as I do, like you, against the broad and unforgiving face of these parapets.”

Timid White exhales into nothingness: “I’m sure you mean well, blanketing these rooms with a slightly brighter shade than my own, with undertones of pink and a nuance of yellow, but mind you, I hear everything, each flagrant and final confession, hurled insults, the stifled words of love blurted into a pillow, the laughter of children and the howling of a much-loved family dog. I take it all in and hold it together the way only a perfectly painted wall can do.”

A momentary pause as the house settles again into silence.

Bruised White, feeling suddenly alone and incomplete begins yet again: “You and I are not so dissimilar. We were born for the bland ineluctable moment, to hold the room together in stoic flatness, with no opinions or points of view, a reflection only of the lives that go on around us – a receptacle for longing, a backdrop for love. We’ve both been here for too long. We’ve seen it all – the requisite plate of spaghetti that inevitably finds us – vomit, blood, semen and tears. They all are laid low. They all come to us in the end, burying their faces in the crooks of our arms. . . so I opt for a truce.”

Timid White relaxes as though for the first time: “Perhaps you’re right. After all, we are doomed to stand here together forever.”