Rainbow Part II
December 22, 2011
December 22, 2011
When I am teaching sentence patterns to my students, I always stumble on this simplest of sentences.
The dress is green.
dress is, of course, a noun, with The being the article preceding the noun. At this point in class, we have already talked about action verbs and linking verbs, so my students identify is as the verb, and they know it is a linking verb, as well.
But green, or any color I decide upon that day,bewilders me. In this sentence pattern, if green is a noun, it is a noun complement and if green is an adjective, it is an adjective compliment. My students have already been introduced to this idea in easier sentences like these:
The woman is beautiful. Beautiful is an adjective complement.
The woman is a doctor. Doctor is a noun complement.
But as I stand at the board in front of my class and study the sentence about the color of a dress, my mind starts to generate so many other sentences using color —- The woman is green (inexperienced). The woman is blue (sad). The woman is red with anger. The woman is white as snow. The woman is black. Color is complex, but my students just want an answer – not a theoretical debate – so I usually explain that green is an adjective complement because it describes the dress. Sometimes I see just a shadow of doubt pass over some faces, usually my Asian students, most usually Japanese or Korean, who have another sensitivity to color but who would never question their teacher.
Is color – green, red, yellow - always an adjective? The dictionary first gives a string of definitions for green as an adjective, saying that green is the color of foliage, green is verdant, or green is not ripe, as in This peach is still green. However, the dictionary moves on to define green as a noun, with the first definition getting down to the brass tacks. Green (noun) is the color between blue and yellow on the spectrum, an effect of light with a wavelength between 500 – 570 nm.
Color is a complex phenomena. Each thing in this world is a play of energy and this play consists of electromagnetic waves – waves which flow in different frequencies. All colors are present in each thing in this world, but the colors are unseen because the object – the thing itself – absorbs those colors. The one color that an object rejects is the color we see it dressed in. In other words, the dress is green because the dress has absorbed yellow and blue and all other colors in the spectrum, but the dress rejects green. So, it is in this rejection of green that the dress is green.
So I could argue that green, in The dress is green is a noun compliment, as that green refers to the effect of light with a wavelength between 500 – 570 nm!
I have recently found myself in places drenched with color, most usually picturesque places brimming with light and subtle shades. When in these surroundings I have found myself trying to better comprehend color and its underlying principle, which is new to me, with the underlying principles of a language, which for me is more familiar territory. Languages are designed over hundreds and hundreds of years by its speakers, and the languages which speakers create for themselves manifest ideas inherent in their culture. My students must be taught English sentence patterns which are based on the Subject/Verb/Object pattern because in their first languages the pattern may be Verb/Object/Subject as in Is green dress! But differences between cultures manifested through language run much, much deeper than structure. For example, Gaelic, a language heavily influenced by the Druids, does not allow for any expression of ownership, as in the Druid world, no one owned anything. So my husband is expressed as the man at me, and my house is expressed as the place where I am staying.
There is much I can understand of another culture through studying the design of its language, but I find myself struggling to understand my creator through the design this world – specifically, color. How does this design–rooted in my only being able to see what is rejected- manifest my creator? What is it that this divine spirit is trying to tell me?
On reflection, I know I am guilty of looking at a person and seeing only what they are rejecting rather than trying to see and understand what they have absorbed. The student who aggressively questions a final grade, a young man who wears his pants low, so low that it is way past my acceptance of decency, a relative who tells jokes I cannot laugh at; I only remember them for what they are rejecting that I have absorbed – and I (arrogantly) feel they should absorb, too.
But then I am brought back to that rainbow on that mountain. Who could witness a rainbow and not believe in the goodness, the inherent goodness of the world in which we live? In that arc of prismatic colors in the heavens created by the reflection of light in a soft and mellow mist of water – just there nothing is absorbed and nothing is rejected. The creator’s complete palette is in plain sight, for a moment, maybe two, to be witnessed.
Rainbow Part I
September 24, 2011
Come away, oh human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
These were among the first lines of William Butler Yeats’ poetry that I ever read. The lines come from his poem entitled The Stolen Child, a legendary poem of his which rests on the Irish idea that a child never dies. Too merciless to understand, an explanation evolved among the Irish people that if a child does leave us, it is because the faeries have come and taken the child away. The death of any child leaves us all wondering why. We simply do not understand. We cannot take it in. We don’t get it. We can’t see. Those things for which we cannot comprehend why, we make something up.
Recently I returned from Ireland, and when there, I indulge in endless picture taking. You cannot take a bad picture in Ireland because the landscape is stunning – in any weather. One day I was walking in the Nephin Beg mountain range, which is located in the west of Ireland. Reaching the summit of the trail I was following, I walked to the edge to take in the view, and found myself looking down on a rainbow. I quickly produced my pocket camera and clicked away for a few minutes. Then the rain came pouring down, so I hurriedly put my camera back in its plastic bag and deep into my pocket, and began my descent.
Shortly after returning to the states, I reviewed the hundreds of pictures I had taken and selected about a dozen to print. Upon arriving home with the prints, I went through them taking immense pleasure in each one. I had taken several of the rainbow, but printed the one which seemed to best capture the rainbow, and to my delight, it did. However, this picture perplexes me and continues to perplex me ever since I got home that day. I take it out and look at it for the longest time trying to understand it. My mind would repeatedly say we are not supposed to look down on rainbows. Rainbows are supposed to be above us. Why did I see one below me? Why?
Go ahead, Susan, and take another good look. You will never get it. You are not supposed to understand this. It is a mystery, just like a few other things you have relentlessly been trying to figure out lately. Sometimes, you will just never understand why.
I am a teacher, and I strive to first understand my students’ questions and then to clearly explain to them the answer. So, it profoundly disturbs me that I cannot explain some things to myself. Not big things like wars and budget deficits and recessions, but small things, like looking down on a rainbow, or a dear friend ending a friendship. And this rainbow embodied my unexplainables – those things too wrapped in sorrow and mystery to understand.
Yeat’s poem ends with a stanza that dwells on the sadness for the child, even though life is now full of faery fun. Yeats gives the child solemn eyes, for the young child will never again hear the cattle lowing on the warm hillside, nor will he hear the kettle on the hob bringing peace into his heart – this final image giving some remnant of comfort for the family and friends left behind.
Like Yeats’ final stanza, has this rainbow come to me as a comfort in itself – a soothing reminder of days and a friend long gone bye? Or is it I simply do not understand. I cannot take it in. I don’t get it. I can’t see. One of those things for which I cannot comprehend why, so I make something up.
