Blue

On Tuesday night, I was ready to smash the champagne bottle on the prow of my Ship of Despair, send it into the waters where it would sink to some new bottomless depth. But as the news improved, I just kept my thumb on the cork and four days later, it is getting sore waiting to pop it open and drink the bubbles of sweet victory. But I’m patient—after all, I’ve waited four years!–and am okay walking through this Purgatory as long as the number 270 appears and my long damped-down shout of exultation roars to every corner of the universe. 

 

Of course, I know looking at that map of blue and red, there is so much work ahead, but work better done with Blue in the White House, done with joy rather than despair, depression, dejection, desolation and despondency. Because despite the Right Wing’s (which is the Wrong Wing) attempt to cat-call, shame, laugh at and put down the Democratic Party and its values to the point where their “mirror of malicious eyes cast upon our shape” (Yeats) starts to make us doubt the nobility of our venture, it is time for us to stand taller with those values, name them, claim them and bring them to life with pride and purpose. 

 

And that brings  us to Blue. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols has this to say about the world’s diverse (but connected) associations with Blue:

 

Truth. The Intellect. Revelation. Wisdom. Loyalty. Constancy. Magnanimity. Piety. Peace. Contemplation. Coolness. Blue is the color of the great deep, the feminine principle of the water, the sky blue color of the Great Mother. The Celts associate it with poets and singers, the Hindus color their god Krishna blue, the Mayans connect it with the defeat of an enemy.

 

I’ll stand by all of that. 

 

And what of Red?

 

Masculinity, the war gods, blood lust, anger, vengeance, cruelty, the color of calamity. Red with white is death (Red in the White House!).

 

Of course, there are also some positive associations with red (in Chinese mythology) and other associations with blue (chastity), but the above well expressed the divide in our country and the deep need we have for blue at this moment in our history. We need to dance to some joyful Jump Blues, consider the happy little bluebird singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and exult that “blue skies, smiling at me, nothing but blue skies, do I see. Never saw the sun shining so bright, never saw things going so right”…

 

That glad bird of happiness is waiting for my shoulder’s invitation and it is a bluebird.