Crayola: The Box of Eight

1
A prayer central to the Jewish tradition, the Shema, is to be said morning and evening. So in the Mishna, a compilation of commentaries, the rabbis discuss. Not why the prayer is important, or why twice a day, but when is morning?

One rabbi says: morning starts when you can distinguish between blue and white. No, says another: between blue and leek.

Which surely requires a tighter squint. But what colour was tchelet, in modern Hebrew an azure of sky? And from which of the graduated greens of a leek was it to be distinguished?


2
I was a bit in love with my high-school art teacher, who encouraged me to paint. When I produced a wide-eyed self-portrait, he commented on the predominance of red. You know what red means? he said, as if translation were involved. His word was passion, and I crimsoned like my likeness. The next day I overpainted everything in green. My depicted self acquired the complexion of algae in a pond.


3
Someone lent me a book about colour theory. It began with simple drawings of colour contrasts and the sense of movement they create: how poppies dance vividly in a green field, daffodils less and cornflowers maybe least. Years later I located a library copy of the book. It turned out to have been reproduced in black-and-white. Not so much dancing. Or the flowers danced differently. My hunger for colour remained.


4
An apartment I rented in early times came with a TV set. ...