06. gluttonous green

notes from digitally secluded girl-moss

Oct 04, 2024

This post is just about one thing — it’s my equivalent of the “one theme” that a writer sticks to until they are over it. until there is nothing else to add.

get a warm drink of your choice,

grab a seat,

and let me tell you

what I have been thinking about.

I wish I could see things in colours.

Reds, blues, yellows and greens. A very specific hue of a very specific colour pops in my head.

On the contrary, I can’t string a sentence of coherence as well as I can allocate a colour to a place, situation, thing or being. In ways only I understand and sometimes, hopefully, my readers as well. It usually leaves people bewildered in conversations, but green is never just green. It’s forest green. Sometimes it's sage. Sometimes it chokes me like pungent olives in gin. Vivid yet deep prussian blue tears blur my vision as I try to blink them away. I believe my emotions swing from one branch to the other, like a makeshift hammock, between the spectrum of pantone shade cards.

My father loves redesigning our home. I was 6 when I carried the larger-than-life binder to my reading nook. Tiny hands and wobbly legs, supporting a huge file, as I make my way up to the third floor corner where no one could find me. The compiled binder gave way to pages filled with different shades of colours available to paint our walls. There was a section for each type of shade.

Ten years later, I helped my sister get ready for her dance performance. Her eyeshadow palette had more colours than my acrylic paint set. Chromatic, matte, glossy. Cool tone mauve, warm tone sunkissed orange. All this range, all this variety. Why stick to one colour, when you can use several hues to mean exactly what you want to say.

However, lately, green has been brooding in me. It has been simmering just above its threshold, threatening to spill out of my lungs through my mouth. If I don’t let it out of my system, in one way or another, I will drown in it. Within myself.

I see it everywhere, and I need it to be everywhere. Driving through boulevards rich in shades of luscious greens. Painting with bold strokes of soft greens on blank and crisp canvases. Reading books with dust covers in the shades of fruits — pears, avocados, lime, gooseberries, guavas and grapefruits. Topping it all off with a palate-cleansing creamy broccoli soup.

Recently, everything has been getting to me. On a digital landscape, no matter what I do for myself, it feels performative. Like I’m a monkey on a leash, as I entertain everyone who walks past me. Against my will, going out of my way to seek attention. As much as I try not to be perceived and keep to myself, everything seems to be on display nevertheless. Scrutinised beyond its mere existence. Points of references and inferences crafting a web of false appearance that has now been thrusted upon me, and is my job to keep up with.

I hate the fact how everyone gets to have a say in who I am, just because a small part of it is online. This intense scrutiny is making me question whether I even like the things I like, second-guessing: do you really really like this, or is it because XYZ said ABC?

I need to cover my whole life with green. Throw a blanket of green over it, like a blank sheet covering unused furniture in a house that has long been abandoned, so you can't see

the blues I cry in.

The reds I crave,

and the yellows I dream of.

You just see the greens. The plain, dull, everyday green #4F7942.

You look at it for a second, but your gaze doesn’t linger. It doesn’t catch your eye, you just happen to look at it because it’s placed next to the piece you were staring at.

This,

whatever it is,

doesn’t drive your curiosity.

Seeing the same hunter green on the ferns outside and the leaves of your artificial succulents, what does this have to offer?

You move on, to the next piece at the exhibition of vibrant colours.

It’s not that I fear intimacy. I don’t, if it’s organic. I fear being perceived, because you do, do you see me for what I am? Or what you think I am? Or who you want me to be?

At the end of the day, I’m a girl who makes lists but this time I was astounded at my own incapacity to make them. Much has happened in this unkind august that if I take a breath, it all comes crashing down.

So the next time we meet, hopefully I will have a list of new existential dread.