Today’s Prompt: Blue

Before all cats turn grey, the world turns blue. The last color to come to the eye in the evening, and the first in the morning is the color of deep, cold water. The mind normalizes it, of course. The mind likes to keep things tidy so that danger stands out. We are savannah creatures at the core. But something else explodes along a row of of giant agapanthus, lilies of the long-ago Nile still rising off their tender stalks. The tiny nightshade hidden in the grass beaming its presence in the gloaming like fireflies looking to dance in the field. What chance of survival could possibly be gained by that moment when time stops and the breath calms to drink such elixir with the eye.

Evening blue reminds us that love of beauty is a survival trait. We might not know how just yet, for science is still struggling to map the brain and decode the genome. The fuzzier logics of being still don’t have a method for testing and must remain for now a metaphysics. But the blue of approaching night suggests there is something there to gain in knowing, though that knowledge might take a very different shape from the current geometry than double-blinds and standard deviations.

Blue is both peaceful and deadly; the blue of the summer sky and the blue of the dead. Blue is paused, poised, unmoving. Infinity is blue, but so is nothingness, both dark and deep, bordering on black, the only difference a glow in the mind, reflected in the eye at the edge of night.

HOW THIS WORKS: I have a jar of nouns. I pick one at random and post it. If I’ve done this right, none of the prompts will be something you’re excited to write about. The excitement comes through what you find as you write about the commonplace.

By the end of the day, write a minimum of 250 words but no more than 500 instigated by the noun.

Tomorrow, I will post my effort here and make a new post for whatever word comes out of the jar next. You are invited to post your writing or link to it in the comments so others can read it. Visit yesterday’s prompt to see what showed up there, whether you wrote your own or posted it.

You can comment without contributing. However: No critiques, please, but discussion of the process most welcome.