How Many Shades of Blue?

Which color is true blue?

photo by D. Vajentic

Please welcome writer Eric Vajentic to The Zed Review.

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My camera picks up shades of blue that I can't ever seem to notice in real time, when everything blends together into primary colors and easy answers. 

I wonder: how many shades of blue are there? 

• How many of them have names? 

• How many can be discerned by the human eye? 

• Are there people that can see the nuances between shades — similar to skilled musicians that can hear sounds in perfect pitch? 

Is this more precise categorization a blessing or a curse? 

I've read before of people with perfect recall. 

Give these folks a date from their past, and they can tell you exactly what happened, what they had for dinner, who they talked to and any and all other minutia that make up a life. 

It seems incredible, but most people with this gift describe it as a burden.  And, why wouldn't it be?  Who has a life where the good moments actually outweigh the bad and the average moments, a life that calls for being remembered in all of its aggregate white noise? 

At some point, it pays to summarize things, to group them together into categories that can be grasped by our brains that are still full of so much matter that is unused.

Regardless if I can see them, these shades of blue sit on top of me like an anchor, incomplete thoughts and half-memories of time long past, of events which I can no longer remember; did they really happen, or were they just something I hoped for so long they became like memories — without my knowledge of their transformation?

What is a memory anyway, but a thought in the present moment? 

Who's to judge the authenticity of such things? 

If it's all up to us — and I can be the arbiter of my own truth — then what have I been so worried about all this time?