Tuesday, 8 December 2009

Rainbow weekend...

Are rainbows like buses, you don't see one for ages and then a whole bunch of them arrive one after the other?

It was a weekend full of rainbows. I could hardly look up without seeing one, over mountains, over roads, over fields – they seemed to be everywhere. Well that isn’t quite true, I saw three over the Saturday and Sunday - all doubles (does that make it six?), all perfect arcs at some point in their fleeting visibility.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet – it never fails to lift my spirits when I see one. There’s something magical about them, even without that pot of gold at the end, or a leprechaun, or a galloping white golden-horned unicorn.

It's impossible to paint a rainbow well - they either look too chocolate box or simply dull, like flat bridges in the air. Turner couldn't do it (he tried though), nor Constable (although there ought to be one in the Haywain) and Dali didn't even try. And I've never seen a Da Vinci rainbow, or a Titian, or a Degas, or a Bosch, or a Bruegel. Perhaps (masterful catchers of light and shade that they all were) they understood the impossibility of painting that transparency of color and ever shifting movement of luminescence and light. If you know better please tell me, I'd love to see a good painting of a rainbow.

That’s it really – a weekend full of rainbows, nothing special. I thought it worth a mention.
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5 comments:

  1. I love rainbows - how lucky were you to see all of those!

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  2. Did you - or any of your readers see that news piece about the new colour that has been discovered? Only bees and lobsters can see it, apparently. But what is weird is trying to imagine that new colour. Try and visualise it. It's impossible. Like trying to think about infinity.
    Anyway, back to more mundane matters. PLEASE do not get rid of Misty. Not literally or blogerally. Mr Shore is a Bad Man for suggesting such a thing. Nuke the the ducks by all means but don't can the cat!

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  3. Yes, I saw that news and I can picture the colour - but then I can see black light and hear the sound of one hand clapping.

    I feel really lucky to have seen so may rainbows in such a short time - but then I spend my time looking at the sky and perhaps one day I will see the Nacreous clouds I dream of.

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  4. Richard Shore commented Facebook (God I wish he wouldn't do that):

    "BTW, there is a very interesting explanation of why busses arrive in bunches here
    http://www.facebook.com/l/9a5cf;www.teamquest.com/resources/gunther/display/2/index.htm

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  5. Alan Spence (poor chap) e-mailed this from his soft padded cell:

    Somewhere over the rainbow there are hordes of demented, miniature, plastic yellow ducks dancing around a flaming pyre of rotting, putrid cats. They mustn't get too close to the flames,

    or they will melt.

    Alan

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