XIX.
Color is very important for humans, I think so. I
think so because I
like that idea because I like colors because I am human. Ring a ring
a
rosey pocket full of posey we all fall down. Disease and death it's
coming,
it's coming to all of us even in children's games.
Liking color let's me find a place where I know I
am human more than
animal. Cages and tails, they haunt me. Not just colors by
themselves, I
mean colors on things, no. It's because colors don't have the same
effect
on animals. Not usually. Except for bower birds. They like blue.
But that is a particular type of exception anyway. It means that
something inside that kind of bird makes it like blue, unless the
parent birds train their bird children what color to pick. I
guess
bringing home examples might count.
It shows how animals are different from humans in
a way, people must
have their nerves and chemicals arranged so that colors make them
feel
good, and not just blue, combinations and mixes, subtle
gradations
strengths and light. Maybe parents teach their kids what colors to
like
especially for controlling feeling good.
I was watching tv and it was showing something
about people and colors,
about groups of people getting ideas about certain colours, and I was
thinking
too that some stories of these peoples tell about why they all seem
to like
certain colours passing them down from parents to children stories of
colors
the fairy tales in color of cultures, carpets of collected cravings
quelling fears
of getting crazed by the sensation of color in their bodies.
Some stories about colors are easy to understand.
It looks like Egyptians
a long time ago liked blue and yellow and blue was a color for water
and
yellow was a color for sun and the sun and the river water very
important
for Egyptians, and soo, gods in color, colorful gods. And why purple
was
a color for kings maybe because kings always had a lot of money and
purple
was expensive then. Colors have meanings when you see them, and
when
you notice that, you can also notice that you are human and not
animal.
In the same tv program I was watching a scientist
was telling me about
machines getting to be different from animals in the same way. It
must
be true, because I notice the computer works better for me when I
am
wearing red. You think I am joking. Well, I am a bit, because the
computer
doesn't have any feelings really. I don't think it knows it's alive.
But the
one the master bought about a year ago is quite clever anyway. It has
an
eye in it - like a video camera which loads when you turn it on. It
can see
768 colors, I see them, when I open up that part of the computer's
brain.
People can see millions of colors by the way. The computer doesn't
like
one color or another, it has no opinion, so I gave it an opinion. I
chose all
the colors closest to red, and told the computer that if the eye sees
any of
those colors when it starts up it should say in my favorite voice it
has:
"You look beautiful today. That color suits you.
What do you want me to
do for you today?"
Then it reads out a list of the things I have been
doing.
At least it has a good memory, better than me, it is a very useful
machine,
and therefore I love it.
Then it says:
"Press my buttons. Enter me where you like."
I told it to say that, it does what I tell it to
do. It is very predictable and
therefore not like any of the humans I meet, so I would never marry
it.
If it dies, I just eject its memory chip and put it in another
machine, no problem,
no funeral, no tears.